Posting from Geral Koenig <jkoenig@hatch.socal.com>

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

I received this in private mail with a request to post it.
I have done so after making minor formatting adjustments.

Properties and Events

In the spirit of exploration in your posting, I throw out to you
the following ideas.

The reason we cannot clearly distinguish between properties
and events is that there is no essential difference.

If we think of the atomic world or the universe there are
only events. JCB's deletion of time from an event, which is
then called a fact, is not an option in the real world.

Properties can be thought of as sine qua non sumti for
concepts.  A center and a radius are properties of a circle.
They are also events in the drawing of a circle.  We wouldn't
think the color of the ink would be a property in the circle
concept. If some culture wanted to establish an Xn place
for color of the circle, then to that culture it is a
property.  In Lojban it would seem we are trying to use
archetypes or universally used sumti for our gismu.

As to JCB's "event" motherhood vs. "property"
motherhood, I must say again that the ka or pu
property-motherhood as he defines it puts us into
some kind of magical timeless world.  If anyone can tell
me how to get there I will be among the first to buy a
ticket.

With JCB, I like to think of property abstractions as
lean or not multiplying entities more than necessary.
I like to think of event abstractions as focusing on a
personally selected set of arguments for a predicate.
I like to think of properties as predicates with few
arguments, which change slowly over time, and events
as predicates with many arguments and an emphasis on
transformation.

I view a property as a slowly occuring event. So
ka and nu are the same grammatically.

Regarding zmadu and the lost "<" and">", I regard
the x3 of zmadu as being a proper place for the units
of the thing being measured.  It is like carrying the
units along in a physics calculation.  If you can go
along with the idea of units being always operationally
defined, then they are an event or property and fit
well into the X3 spaceholder.  Like this:

         li vo zmadu li ci lo nu kancu
         4 is greater than 3 in the event of counting.

This is for integers (counting numbers).

         li vo zmadu li ci lo nu cimde
         4 is greater than 3 in the event of measurement.

This is for floating point numbers.

I hope this makes sense to you or triggers some
creative thoughts. My heartfelt gratitude goes
out to you in the very difficult task of
perfecting Lojban.

--
Jerry Koenig    jkoenig@hatch.socal.com