TECH: grammar updates

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

Well, I have now decided to withdraw my support for the "*mo'u" construction.
The formal change is being kept in until a few off-list people (Nora and
possibly pc) have a chance to review it, but I personally have accepted
Colin's arguments, and added one of my own.

My own argument against "mi mo'u se mau do nelci la betis." is a variant
of Colin's that since the principal claim is a comparison (that I like
Betty more than you like Betty), the main selbri should be "zmadu".
I accept this argument, and further add that it is really a mistake to
think of "semau" as meaning "...more than..." since the latter inherently
has at least 2 places and all BAI tags really have only one place.

This confusion has deep historical roots, resulting from the fusion of
three or four different Old Loglan word-groups into our uniform BAI.
Historically, only the causals were subject to SE conversion, making them
into "effectuals" (I don't know the proper word for "seki'u" and friends).
The Lojban designers generalized, allowing every BAI to take SE, and allowing
(in principle) any selbri to be used as a BAI-type tag.  But the essence
of a modal tag is that it governs only one sumti; it is not a relation
between two or more sumti.

Pragmatically, when we say:

1)      mi cidja ki'u le nu mi xagji
        I eat with-justification the event-of my being-hungry.

we mean that what the hunger justifies is the eating, and so

2)      le nu mi xagji cu krinu le nu mi cidja
        the event-of my being-hungry justifies the event-of my eating.

is equivalent in meaning.  However, it is not the case that

3)      mi cusku zo'e do bau la lojban.
        I express something to-you in-language Lojban

transforms into something like:

4)      la lojban. bangu le nu mi cusku zo'e do
        Lojban is-the-language-of-group the event-of I express something to-you

The main predication of Example 3 simply can't be stuffed into the x2 place
of bangu: it doesn't belong.

We still have the (pure) forethought connectives like "semaugi...gi" and the
mixed logical/modal afterthought connectives like ".esemaubo", and these
should suffice for the cases, if any there be, where such constructs must
exist.  It will always be rather indeterminate, however, what is to go into
the second position of such connectives, because of the inherent one-place
nature of BAIs.


In other grammatical news:

I have added fuller support for non-logical connectives: they may now be
used in termsets on a (grammatical) parity with logical connectives, and
they may be used in short-scope (JOIK-BO) and long-scope (JOIK-KE) uses.
These new constructions are allowed within sumti, selbri, and MEX.

The Nick/Lojbab experimental cmavo "xo'e", which eradicates a place
(so that "da klama xo'e xo'e de di" means the same as "da litru de di"),
has been assigned the cmavo "ne'e" and placed in selma'o KOhA.

Nick's declefter is now also part of the grammar: it does not have its own
cmavo, but is signalled by "jai" without a following tense or modal, thus
keeping the close link between "jai" and "fai".  Its effect is to take the
abstraction normally falling into the x1 place of the selbri and move it
to the extra "fai" place; the new x1 place is one of the places of the
subordinate bridi within the abstraction.  (If x1 is not an abstraction,
"jai" is ill-formed).  Exactly which place is chosen is unspecified, so
"jai" may be equivalent to "jai gau" or to something else.  Example:

5)      le nu mi catra la djim. cu jensa la djein.
        The event-of my killing Jim shocks Jane.

becomes:

6)      mi jai jensa la djein. fai le nu [mi] catra la djim.
        I shock Jane by the event-of [my] killing Jim.

Here "jai gau" would do as well and be more specific, but this is not always
so.  If the abstraction to be thus manipulated is not in x1, use "jai SE"
to get it there.

"ma'o" now accepts a full mekso (terminator "te'u") rather than
just a lerfu string.  This allows operand-to-operator coercion for
lambda calculus and other unusual mekso.

Lastly, the recurring desire to add new kinds of abstractors to NU has been
achieved without any new grammatical machinery.  "su'u", the vague abstractor,
now has the place structure:

        x1 is an abstract nature of <the bridi> of type x2

giving us the title:

7)      le su'u la .iecuas. kuctra selcatra
                be lo salpydizyfa'a ke nalmatma'e sutryterjvi
        the abstract-nature-of (Jesus is-an-intersect-shape type-of-killed-one)
                of-type a slope-low-direction type-of non-motor-vehicle
                speed-competition
        The Crucifixion of Jesus Considered As A Downhill Bicycle Race

as an example.  This place structure makes explicit the notion that
every abstractor is a specialized kind of "su'u"; for example, "nu...kei"
means the same as "su'u...kei be lo fasnu", the abstract nature of
(some bridi) of-type an event.

I believe this is the entire list of outstanding grammatical proposals.

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.