calling all nay sayers, we want opinions quick!

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab>]

How about a controversial proposal?  It must be decided quickly, since
it affects stuff going into JL.  It is controversial for among other
reasons because it affects a great deal of previous Lojban text, and
requires relearning among people like me who have learned to speak
Lojban.  Obviously, there has to be considerable virtue to such a
proposal for it to even be seriously considered.  I am of mixed minds
in this regard.

I am presenting what I think is the strongest case for change below.
The primary argument AGAINST change is that it is a change in well-known
usages.  A secondary argument might mean that a change could create
constructs of obscure semantics - but we have a lot of these in the
language %^)

The question is whether "nai" should continue to serve the mixed purpose
of indicating contrary or scalar negation in some constructions, and
contradictory negation in other constructions.

The most well-known such constructions are, for contradictory negation,
the logical connectives.  For example, in "ganai" means that the
following sentence or sumti is contradictorily negated before evaluating
truth conditions.  Non-logical connectives are also contradictory when
modifed by "nai":  joinai means that it is not true that the two
components are conceptually mixed or massified in evaluating the
meaning; it does not necessarily imply that some different connective
might apply, as a scalar negation might.

On the other hand, the attitudinals modified by -nai produce a contrary
negation, along a fixed scale defined for each attitudinal.  .oinai is
the scalar negation of complaint, which can be comfort, or pleasure.  It
does not merely mean the absence of complaint.

No one has had any trouble keeping these two most familiar usages of
-nai straight.  The problem comes in the more obscure usages.  Each such
usage was defined in the negation paper as having either a scalar or a
contradictory meaning.  Most of these are fairly intuitive IF you
memorize what one particular example usage means.  Thus "ki'unai" is a
contradictory negation meaning "in spite of reason", as compared to
"ki'u" which means "because of reason".  "punai" has been defined since
time immemorial as claiming only that the relationship modifed is not
true in the past, and does not claim that it is true in the
present-or-future, hence it is a contradictory negation.  "ru'inai",
also found within tense structures, in contrary.  Whereas "ru'i" means
"continuously", "ru'inai" means "discontinuously", or "intermittently".
It thus claims more than the absence of continuity, it claims that the
relationship holds in a >different< manner than continuously.

But the clean division of the negation paper has undergone a lot of
stress, as we've rigorously analyzed other components of the language.
No one remembers, for example, what "nai" means on abstractors, because
no one has ever used these in actual usage.  There are only two
theoretical usages that have been derived to even justify having
negation on abstractors, and they will probably need to be taught as
idiom before people learn them well enough to try productive new uses of
the construct.

The analysis can get obscure.  "paroi" means "exactly once", as a
measure of occurances of an event.  Does "paroinai" mean some number
other-than-exactly-once, one version of a scalar negation, or does it
mean "never" = "not once".  If a contradictory negation, it turns out to
probably be identical to the former, since it claims only that it is
false that exactly one instance is the count - it might be two, three,
or none, but it is false that "once" applies.  Thus it is inclonclusive
whether "nai" in this instance is contradictory or contrary unless we
define the contrary to mean the same as English "not once" = "never".

More significantly, and the proximate cause of this proposal, are the
FAhA space directions.  "fa'a" means towards a specific point".  Does
"fa'anai" mean "directly away from the point", "other than towards the
point (maybe veering off to the left a little)", or simply that it is
false that "towards the point" applies (which might include that the
event is not happening at all, since contradictory negation denies the
claim as made rather than directly making a different claim)?

Originally, when we created the set of words, the first meaning was
used.  However, John Cowan pointed out that "directly away from" assumed
not merely a contrary negation, but a polar opposite - a direct antonym.
Thus we added a new word for "directly away from", and I assumed the
middle meaning.  However now, as a result of writing the detailed
analysis in the tense paper, John has observed that "FAhA" as a space
direction is exactly analogous to "PU" as a time direction.  If "punai"
means merely that a claim that an event occurred in the past is false
(while making no claim about the present or future) it would be
extremely inconsistent to assume that "fa'anai" meant anything more than
that the claim of "towards the point" is false.

It has been suggested several times that we change "punai" to mean
"other than in the past", a scalar negation.  The arguments against this
were several.

First, it is a direct contradiction of a usage that JCB has taught for
Loglan since he first introduced tense constructs.  His classic example
of a complex tense, the equivalent of Lojban "pujecanaijeba" (in the
past, and not in the present, and in the future" is a contradictory
formulation useful in the phrase "The Once and Future King".  We've
never overridden JCB unless we had a damned good reason.  The best
reason that we can come up with is this inconsistency issue.  JCB never
considered this because he never recognized the distinction between
contrary and contradictory negation, even though the distinction is
fundamental to logic.  Given that JCB's classic example can be expressed
just fine by tranferring the contradictory negations to the logical
connectives "pujenaicajeba, there is no loss of expressivity in making
punai contrary.  (But note that you have to be careful with logical
connectives, which are left grouping - and there is no way to change
that grouping inside a tense construct:  pujecanajeba means "not true
(in the past and the present) and true in the future", which does not
rule out it being true in the past and the fututre but not the present.)

The current Lojban grammar almost makes the problem go away.  When used
as a tense on a selbri, "na'e pu" gives the scalar negation, and "na pu"
gives a contradictory negation.  But these negations apply to entire
tense constructs, and this may not be what you want.  "na'e puparoi"
means "other than (exactly one time in the past)", but "punaiparoi"
means "na puparoi" (false that it occurs exactly one time in the past)
and not "exactly one time other than in the past" - the latter seems
only to be expressible by the compound tense "na'epujoiparoi".  The
intricacy of the rules in this area of the tense grammar will discourage
people from creatively adding to the set of Lojban tenses, for fear they
will misanalyze, and there may be some tenses that are simply impossible
to express because some interaction of rules makes it impossible to put
a contrary negation on exactly the piece that you want.

A counter argument is that, used as a sumti tcita, you can have "na'epu"
but you cannot have "na pu" - it would fail the LALR1 rules to permit
this construct.  Thus there is no way to express contradictory "not
before ..." except with a contradictory interpretation of "punai", while
a contrary interpretation would give two means to say the same thing.

By the same token, of course, the contrary interpretation of "fa'anai"
can be expressed with "na'efa'a", but there is no other way to express
the contradiction of "fa'a" as a sumti tcita.

There are basically two choices that seem viable.  One is the status
quo, which works well enough, with the nooks and crannies somewhat
difficult to teach, but all the basic expressions of the language stable
and the negation paper essential accurate as written (if incomplete in
documenting some of the choices and their implications).

The other, which Nora suggested lightly before realizing the
implications, is the subject of this message.



This alternative is to introduce a second word to selma'o NAI.  For
relearning considerations, the word must be fairly close to "nai", and I
therefore am suggesting "nei", which is a thus-far-almost-never-used
word in GOhA for the current bridi; "nei" has also been changed once
before, and probably no one except Beta test users of LogFlash 3 is
likely to have learned it.  It would be given some other cmavo, probably
a CV'V form.  I would recommend that contradictory negation continue to
use "nai", and that scalar negation would use "nei", since nai has a
similarity to na and nei has the 'e' from "na'e".

Thus, contrary negations would use "nei".  "fa'anei" would mean "some
other direction than towards", "fa'anai" would mean "false that it is
towards".  "punai" would mean that it was not in the past, "punei" would
mean that it occurred some time other than in the past - i.e. the
present or future.  The major impact is to attitudinals - ".oinai" would
become ".oinei", and ".uinai", ".uinei".  I would presume that ".uinai"
would be denying happiness, which is not the same as expressing
unhappiness , but doesn't rule it out either - it would not be the same
as ".uicu'i" (no particular happiness) which rules out both happiness
and unhappiness.  Thus, even in the area most affected, "nei" would add
some expressive power.  Indeed it was this realization that led me to
write this message.

It is NOT clear, though, what "nei" might do in places that have
hitherto been sacrosanct contradictory negation.  What does "mi .anei
do" mean?  "Me and someone other than you", I would presume.  On the
other hand, tanru logical connection becomes a real loose end.  In
existing usage, we've realized that tanru connection is not currently
subject to the rules of other logical negations - you can't necessarily
break them up into separate sentences.  How does the "nai"/"nei"
distinction affect these constructs?  I won't even try to guess.  (John,
care to tackle this?)

So the pros are increased expressivity, including some identifiably
useful forms, and some increase of regularity.  The cons are that this
is a change to a well-learned language feature, a real relearning
problem that can be minimized but not eliminated, and that we may open
some semantic nightmares that we might wish to avoid.  The original
problem gets solved, though I'm not necessarily recommending elimination
of the possibly redundant na'epu form, which scalar negates a whole
tense construct.

Do you see value in a change, or let the status quo prevail at this late
date?  If you are already a Lojban user, will the relearning affect you
more severely than the increased analyticity benefits you?  Let's hear
from the audience.  Soon.  Whether you are a nay-sayer, or a nei-sayer,
I want your opinion. (Groan!)

lojbab