Re: replies mainly re "ka"

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> And:
> > We must distinguish "features" from "feature values":
> >       feature      feature value
> > (I)   colour       red, blue, green
> Is "redness" a feature or a feature value? I suppose it's a feature,
> and that is what I understand "le ka [ke'a] xunre" to mean.

A feature is a selbri, a function from the possessor to the value.
I don't think redness is a feature: "what is the redness of this
book? Answer: crimson" does not exemplify the normal meaning of
redness. "Redness" is the defining properties of the x1 tersumti
of xunre. This is roughly what "ka keha xunre" yields: a tersumti.

> > "Differ" needs a feature (e.g. size) as x3, not a feature value.
> Agreed.

Right. So I don't think "lo ka broda" is adequate as x3 of "differ".

> > I have been assuming that "property" means "red, blue, green, male,
> > female, human, dog". Quite possibly I've misunderstood the intention.
> I think it means "redness, masculinity, dogness, etc".

If X has the propery of redness then red(X), and vice versa, so it
seems fair to say that a property is a tersumti, which contains the
possessor of the property.

> > I'm not saying that because ka and lihi are in the wrong selmaho
> > there are certain things we are unable to say. Rather, I am saying
> > that the logical structure expressed by ka and lihi is the logical
> > structure of words in a different selmaho from NU.
> I agree, but not everything in a given selmaho has the same logical
> structure. For example, {goi} and {ne}, both in selmaho GOI, have
> different logical structures. The selmaho only determines what
> syntactic structures are allowed, not the logical structure.

The logical structures of goi and ne might be sufficiently similar
in a general way: given "X GOI Y" there is some relationship between
X and Y - X and Y are sumti of some bridi.

> > > There is no syntactic rule that constrains {ke'a} to be inside a
> > > relative clause anyway, so there you have another nice source of
> > > semantic garbage.
> > This is easily rectified by a rule that defines what keha means when
> > it is not within a relative clause (e.g. it is equivalent to a zohe).
> If you can do that then there is no problem. In the case of {ka}, just
> add a rule that if the bridi is all filled, so that there is no room
> left for {ke'a}, then a {do'e ke'a} is assumed.

That rule is fine. But it doesn't solve a more awkward problem: when
more than one syntactic tersumti are unfilled, which is to be filled
by keha, and which by zohe?

> > > There is no such homomorphism. Semantic garbage abounds in syntactic
> > > space.
> > What are examples? If there are any, I doubt if they are to be found
> > in the foundations of Lojban's/Loglan's design.
> ta goi ti
> vo'u zunle vo'o

I don't see the problem with these two - I mean I don't see why they're
semantic garbage.

> zi'o poi klama le zarci

I see the problem with this, and it could perhaps be fixed by changing
the syntactic status of ziho. (Personally I'd have preferred 5 cmavo
in SE, meaning "zap the nth place".) But this problem is not too
bad, because only the poi clause is uninterpretable; it doesn't affect
the bridi it occurs in.

> li pipaipi

If that ends up uninterpretable then it ought to be fixed.

> I'm sure there are many more types. Of course, you can give rules to
> interpret them, but then someone learning the language will need to
> learn an extremely large set of extremely useless rules.

Every grammatical Lojban sentence ought to be interpretable by a
computer: that, to me, is at least implicit in the promise of
Loglan/Lojban. At the least there should be general rules of
repair, such as "if a sumti is uninterpretable, replace it by
{zohe}".

> Ok, {ni} is a singleton, but it takes a lambda variable, like {ka}, so
> that you can say {le ni ke'a clani}, which is keha's tallness, and
> then {la djan frica la meiris le ni [ke'a] clani}.

I don't agree. "lo ka mi clani" makes no sense, but "lo ni mi clani"
(with saturated selbri in both examples) does. In my view, ni, and
lso nu, are semantically like added BAI places; I think of them as
sumti of the subordinate bridi.

By the logic of your "le ni keha clani", one could also have
"la djan frica la meris le duhu keha clani" - D & F differ in
terms of which of them is tall. I don't necessarily wish to
reject such a construction, but it doesn't count as evidence
for whether ni (or any other KA) requires a bridi or a tersumti
as its complement.

> > > nu   (mu'e, pu'u, za'i, zu'o)
> > > du'u (si'o)  (su'u = du'u taimakau...)
> > > ka   (li'i)  (ni = ka ...xokau...)
> > > jei (not really an abstraction, but often misused as jei = du'u xukau)
> > I agree with the analysis, I think, except for the rendering of ni, since
> > I'm opposed to ka being in NU.
> Wherever {ka} is, {li'i} and {ni} should be there too. Perhaps I would
> change to ni = ka la'umakau ...

Ka is "the property of being (an) X", and lihi is "the experience of
being (an) X", but ni is not "the amount of being (an) X". Rather,
ni is "the amount by which Y is (an) X". So I agree ka and lihi
should be together (outside NU), but ni should stay with nu.

> > Do you see how a set can come into being in stages? If so, you can see
> > how a set can be a process.
> No, I can see how its coming into being can be a process, but the set
> itself is not the process, that would be sumti raising.

Does a set have temporal dimensions? I think it does. Maybe it's a
personal quirk of mine to be able to think of most things as events.

> > I'm still not convinced that naho doesn't mean what I thought it did.
> Let mi change to a simpler example. Say we want to say "in general,
> elephants are grey".
> You want to say:
>        na'oku ro xanto cu grusi
> To me, this says that if you look at the unspecified interval (let's
> say it's ze'e, all time) then for a significant portion of the interval
> you will find that every elephant is grey. In parts of the interval
> this may not be true, but typically it will.
> That is not what the English expression says.

You have persuaded me.

> Probably the best translation is {lo'e xanto cu grusi}.

Maybe, but it's not a general solution. It won't do for "In general,
I am grey". And it was that - the inadequacy of lohe in some
circumstances - that set me off on this subthread.

> Similarly, you can't say {na'oku ro skoto ...} if you don't mean each
> and every Scotsman, at least in the parts of the interval where the
> relationship holds.

True enough. But in "an englishman's taste for whisky is acquired" we
don't mean the generic Englishman either (though maybe we do mean
the generic englishman-with-a-taste-for-whisky, or the generic
englishman's-taste-for-whisky).

So, how to say "in general it is the case that..."?

----
And