Re: TECH: grammar updates

[C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK]

ki'ecai djan

>
> 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.
>
> 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.


.ie There are several unfortunate consequences of that generalisation, as well
as the fortunate ones.

As I understand it, the SE that precedes BAI is not the same as other SE
anyway. As you say, BAI are 1-place, and the relationship between BAI and
SE BAI is:

if
        do'e            represents      fi'o broda
then
        se do'e         represents      fi'o se broda
        te do'e         represents      fi'o te broda
etc
So the SE is a selector of the appropriate tergismu from the underlying
selbri, rather than a converter at all.
 transforms into something like:

> 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.
>
I think it is a mistake to think of these as connectives. I think it is more
productive to think of them as connectives plus tcita on the second connectand.
This is easy to see for sentence connectives:

        .ijeseri'abo co'e = .ije (bo) seri'a co'e
just as
        .ijebabo co'e   = .ije(bo) ba co'e

so I suggest
        .ijesemaubo co'e = .ije(bo) semau co'e (whatever that means)
and
        xy. .esemaubo .y'y = nu'i xy. nu'u .e semau .y'y

Thus the BAI remains 1-place.


> 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.

.i'e

> 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.


I'm dubious that this is either necessary (has anybody ever used it) or
a good idea, but I don't think it does any harm.

> 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.

This is very clever (perhaps too clever). For the first time I sort of
understand it.  I have looked at Nick's suggestion several times, and somehow
it has never made its way through to the necessary part of my brain to
be understood. I look forward to seeing it in use.


> "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.

.i'ecu'i
>
> 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.

.u'e.i'esai Very neat, and a beautiful bit of consolidation.


        mi'e kolin