TECH: more on panra and only

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Well, Nora and the rest of the Monday night crew didn't think much of my
formulation for panra, but for relatively minor reasons.  She liked the
idea of a focus on differences, but does not like the concept that all
differences must be enumerated implied by my "only".  She poses a
parallel where the essential difference between two objects is one of
color, but notes that inherent to there being two objects, there must
also be the non-essential difference in position.  She says she would
accept a place structure that had both a similarities and a differences
place provided that both places were marked as "essential or relevant"
similarities/differences rather than "only" and thus need not be a
complete enumeration.  She agrees that the standard place should go,
being tied to either the similarities of the differences place, or both.

In passing though, she sympathized with my constant heartache over
"only" and came up with what she thinks is the solution, and even
convinced me.  I have no idea if it has been proposed before - there
having been so many spilt electrons on this subject.  She said that all
that is need is to have a gismu for "unique/only" and then upon defining
what she meant, this meant merely that we need to have a relationship
between a set description and a COMPLETE specification of its members.
cmima does not do this - x1 of cmima could be a single member out of
many.  However, one version of the place structure proposed a couple of
months ago for mei DOES work, in that x1 is a mass, x2 a set, and x3 is
either a complete list of members or like cmima is one or more of the
members (two interpretations - I recall that Cowan and I disagreed, and
the current wording is unfortunately ambiguous as to the decision, if we
reached one).  If the former, complete enumeration is required in x3,
then "only" is "terso'umei", with "terpavmei" for "only/unique". it was
noted that the other noncomplete membership could probably be covered by
a compound using cmima.

A side observation is that EVERY time a place structure calls for a
complete specification of set members then there is an implicit "only"
as one meaning for that predicate.

I'm pretty sure that this doesn't eliminate the need for "po'o" but
could make its meaning broader and clearer - when attached to any sumti
it makes the metalinguistic claim that the sumti is the complete set of
values that makes the bridi true.  Presumably on a selbri, it makes the
claim that the selbri is the only valid relation between the places.
This probably fails the test of usage though, and the selbri, if not
both interpretations, may need to be worded as "the only essential or
relevant".

a) Does this version of panra sound more satisfactory?

b) Does the solution to only, and the associated decision on the x3 of mei
seem ok?

c) Does this clarify and make "po'o" more acceptable to the community?

lojbab