Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma

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

Jorge:
> >   Ax, x is a member of {Xorxes, And}, Ey, y is sibling of x: I met y
> > which translates (without loss of precision) as:
> >   I met lo sibling be ro luha luhi la xorxes ce la and
> The last step fails because in the Lojban version Ey comes before Ax,
> i.e. "lo sibling" before "ro lu'a..."

Whoops. Make that {xohu ro luha luhi la xorxes ce la and}.

> As far as I can tell, {lo tunba be ro lu'a lu'i la xorxes ce la and} is
> the same as {lo tunba be la xorxes e la and}.

Quite so. The difference comes when {xohu} is added.

> > The case that motivated pc to propose xohu (or something resembling it)
> > is "Pick a card" meaning "There is a card I command you to pick", and
> > NOT "I command you to make it the case that there is a card that you
> > pick". Without xohu that is unsayable.
> I wouldn't say it is unsayable. You'd just have to use {minde}, like
> you are doing in English. Since the meaning with {xo'u} is the more
> unlikely, I don't really care that you need a circumlocution.

"Go away" is imperative, and the grammar says it is a command. "I
command you to go away" is declarative, and the grammar says it is
an assertion. The same goes for Lojban. The exact nature of the
difference is still a matter of debate, but it is clear that there
is a difference (I have my own analysis, but shan't inflict it upon
my fellow list-members). The difference is more than a matter of brevity.
It is similar to the difference between "me" and "the person speaking".

> > As far as I'm aware, the default is that something has scope
> > over what it precedes. I don't see that this is more or less coherent
> > with either rule for the scope of something flagged by xohu.
> If xo'u was simply a jump to an outer prenex, it wouldn't affect the
> rule that everything has scope over what it precedes. I would like
> to preserve that rule without exceptions.
Doesn't something in an outer prenex have scope over something in an
inner prenex?

> > Broadly speaking, I think that my suggestion is preferable only
> > because the rule for it is simpler.
> I disagree that it is simpler. It forces another (more basic?) rule
> to have exceptions.

Linguists often disagree on what counts as simplicity. And since they
use different formalisms or no formalism at all, the disagreement is
not resolvable. I happen to work in a framework where the exceptionality
of a rule is costless (i.e. the rule itself adds complexity to the
grammar, but in most cases its status as an exception imposes no cost).
This view seems to me to suit natural language, which is riddled with
exceptions to virtually everything.

> > Say I know the house is blue: then I could say "She likes it that the
> > house is blue". But if I don't know what colour the house is then I
> > can say "She likes it that the house is the colour it is", or "She
> > likes the fact that the house is the colour it is". How to render this
> > into Lojban? Pred calc first:
> >   Ex, x is the colour of the house & she likes the fact that x is the
> >   colour of the house
> > That goes straightforwardly into Lojban. Furthermore - dare I say it? -
> > it seems that xohu will make this less cumbersome:
> >    koha prami lo nu le zdani cu skari xohu da
> >    Ex, koha likes the fact that x is the colour of the house.
> {xo'u} seems to work there.
> > Okay. If you accept that, then your beautiful example doesn't need
> > makau.
> Mmmm... Compare with:
>        ko'a djuno le du'u le zdani cu skari makau
>        ko'a djuno le du'u le zdani cu skari xo'u da
>        Ex, ko'a knows the fact that x is the colour of the house.
>        She knows what colour the house is.

I wasn't claiming that {xohu da} suffices for {makau} as indirect
interrogatives in a duhu-clause. I have previously offered "She knows
the identity of the set of colours of the house" as a way of
rendering "She knows what colour the house is".

> Does this mean that {xo'u} and {kau} are one and the same thing?
> Almost. The difference is that {xo'u da} is existentially quantified,
> while {makau} isn't (and this may explain further why I prefer makau
> to dakau).
>        ko'a se pluka le nu le zdani cu skari makau
> is more general, because it includes the possibility for example that
> {le zdani cu skari noda}, or {le zdani cu skari reda}. The speaker
> doesn't know the answer to {le zdani cu skari ma}, but does know
> that whatever is the answer, ko'a likes that fact.

"She likes the identity of the set of colours of the house" would
allow for these possibilities. I think I'm clear now about {makau},
and don't think it is necessary (i.e. we could manage without it),
but as you're so fond of it I wouldn't want to argue for abandoning
it.

> > However, let's go back to makau in the frica example, since
> > I have at long last understood adequately (I hope) what you intend.
> >   koha kohe frica le ka keha se skari makau
> >   Koha and kohe differ in terms of the colour they are.
> >   Koha and kohe differ by virtue of the fact that they are the colour
> >     they are.
> >   ro da, da is member of {koha, kohe}, ro de, da skari de:
> >      koha kohe frica le nu da skari de
> > There's an ugly repetition of {skari}, but it is sayable.
> There you are essentially saying two sentences:
>        da zo'u ko'a ko'e frica le nu ko'a skari da
>        ije de zo'u ko'a ko'e frica le nu ko'e skari de

Don't you think that your makau version is in a sense saying two
sentences as well? {Makau} rewrites as the answer to a potential
question, so in {koha kohe frice le ka keha skari makau}, makau
ought to be replaceable by the colours of keha = koha and kohe.

----
And