Re: Connective question

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!C.J.Fine>]

la mark. culsn. cusku la'edi'u

>
>
> Lately I have taken to trying to think of how to translate English
> expressions that I hear on the radio into Lojban's structure (not
> necessarily the words; my vocabulary isn't that big and I can't flip
> through lists whilst driving.)  One struck me this morning and led to a
> little thought about some of Lojban's connectives.  This is a pretty basic
> question and I'm positive it's been dealt with before (I can't remember
> reading about it anywhere in Lojban's literature, but I think it's there
> somewhere).  Anyway, it was a commercial for some clothing sale, and it was
> saying how they have "clothes for men and women".  Now.  Do they mean
> "clothes for men as well as clothes for women" or "clothes which may be
> worn both by men and women"?  I *think* these are plausible ways of
> handling these readings in Lojban:
>
> lo taxfu be lo'e nanmu .e lo'e ninmu == clothes for men and clothes for
>         women; not necessarily that the same clothes be for both.
>
> lo taxfu be lo'e nanmu ku jo'u lo ninmu == unisex clothes, for both sexes.
>
> Is this a legitimate distinction between ".e" and "jo'u"?  ".e" is a
> logical connective, and I imagine it as asserting the relevant bridi twice,
> as it were, once for each of its arguments, with no connection in between.
> "mi .e la djan. klama" means that I and John go/come, not necessarily that
> we do so together or at the same time or having anything to do with one
> another, while "mi jo'u la djan. klama" implies more of a connection, while
> "mi joi la djan. klama" implies that we worked on it as a team, so the
> action could really only be said to have been accomplished by both of us in
> concert.
>
> I realize that this example is open to other methods, including relative
> clauses and the like.  Also, note that you could argue that unisex clothes
> are not for "men AND women" but rather for "men OR women", and require the
> use of ".a", the inclusive-OR or some such.  What are the opinions of you
> folks out there?
>

        lo taxfu be lo'e nanmu .e lo'e ninmu

seems to me be equivalent (modulo existence) to
        da poi taxfu lo'e nanmu .e lo'e ninmu

which expands to
        da poi ge taxfu lo'e nanmu gi taxfu lo'e ninmu

- ie something which is clothing for men and is clothing for women.
This seems to me to mean strictly unisex clothing. I think '.a' will do
quite happily for clothing that will do for a man, a woman or both.

I am not yet familiar with the non-logical connectives (I'm suddenly
assimilating two or three years' worth of language development in a very
short time .ue), but I would have thought that the 'jo'u' example would
mean what more like what you said for '.e'.

I have a question: are 'joi' and 'jo'u' permissible when there
group/mixture in fact contains only one of the connectands? Does 'lo
ninmu joi nanmu' imply that there are members of both sexes in the
group?

[If anybody's going to answer me, please don't do so until January,
because I am signing off for Christmas tonight].

                kolin