TECH RE: The Distribution Problem: An Ambiguity?

[I.Alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK]

doi kolin.

> 2) ... selgadri are not particularly relevant to the issue.

You mentioned them, which meant they were in my mind while
considering the distribution problem, and led to me drawing
the analogy I did.  The point of this analogy was simply
to emphasise, by means of a specific example, the problems,
not to say absurdities, which would be caused by arbitrarily
mandating that tanru modification should be allowed to distribute
over connectives.  I agree that this example only works
because of the specific nature of the tanru modification,
but then I was choosing an extreme case to show that distributivity
wouldn't work as a general principle.

> ... nothing to do with jeks:  it applies just as much with giheks.

?!? Of course it does.  Why should they be any different.  They're
basically just syntactic variants of the same logical connective,
along with eks and guheks and geks.

>    lo nixli gi'a nanla cu broda
isn't grammatical:
        da poi nixli gi'a nanla cu broda

I think we're basically in agreement here on the essential point.
I was just trying to reinforce it by putting a different slant
on it.


doi kau,n.

I think my instincts about the difficulty of defining {xai}
may have been wrong.  It has to modify the logical connective itself,
otherwise we're no better off than before - Colin's analysis
still applies.  And (let's assume it has the syntax of a UI)
{broda jexai brode} on it's own wouldn't have any meaning
that was easy to describe.  But I've more or less convinced
myself that it _can_ be defined to have the right properties
when used as a seltanru, i.e. {broda jexai brode brodu} is by
definition the same as {broda bo brodu je brode bo brodu}.
I don't see any reason whatsoever why the two tanru modifications
shouldn't be of completely different kinds, unlike Colin.

This isn't _quite_ as general as my proposal, but it certainly
seems to satisfy the important requirement, and looks as if it
will be simpler to understand intuitively.

mi'e .i,n.