proposals

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

             On "any" still once more, if all that is lacking is
        conciseness, I should note that _pa_ is shorter than "any" by any
        measure, and _CVhV_ro_, while longer, is about the same relative
        length, given that lojban expressions tend to be longer than
        English.  Now, what is lacking -- except perhaps the will to use
        logic effectively?
             On xorxes's example.  When I said that I did not understand
        them, I meant just that: they were examples without adequate
        explanation of what was involved, what was being changed to what.
        In light of the further discussion with lojbab, I now see a bit
        more of what is involved and am less enthusiastic, at least for
        the _du'i_ case.  that seems to involve moving an expression from
        an adverbial to a conjunctive role and that kind of move,
        initiated by a single word but then encompassing a whole lexeme,
        seems to me to be near the heart of a number of odd changes in
        recent years, changes that make it hard for me to recognize much
        of current lojban structure from a historical perspective.  Since
        the sentence involved does seem to contain a logical conjunction
        (actually of three sentences) and the addition is only an _e_, I
        would vote to stick with the present form unless a lot more study
        of the consequences of the shift show some advantages to it.
             On leapers and (to coin a phrase) pointers.  A leaper does
        indeed change the prenex, placing the tagged quantifier at the
        head.  The other term, the pointer, just indicates that the
        tagged sumti is to be interpreted from outside the opaque context
        in which it lies; it does not -- if it is a quantifier --
        actually move it outside (although I suppose it has that effect
        eventually).  More importantly for the introduction of the
        pointer was that if allows nonquantifier terms in opaque contexts
        to have external reference and (the specific xorxes problem for
        which it was introduced) thus to be used after opaque-making
        predicates without the subject-raising flag and, thus, to be
        treated as transparent.  It is a minor point, but a useful one,
        as xorxes kept insisting last fall.
             On lambda.  I always assumed -- and those who have used the
        forms have practiced -- that insertion into an abstraction was in
        order from the left into free spaces.  (This is the rule in
        lambda too, except that rarely are the spaces left free to apply
        it, it is how modified lambda works, however.) Thus,
        _le_ka_dunda_ is the property of someone giving something to
        someone and applies first of all to a giver and then to ordered
        pairs and finally to ordered triples (this is not exactly how it
        works in lambda but the end result is the same). To get the
        recipient, then, we have either to convert the predicate
        _te_dunda_ (isn't it?) or fill in the unwanted gaps explicitly
        _le_ka_da_dunda_de_ (scope only within the abstraction). We old-
        timers know that we can get any ordering of terms to a predicate
        using only members of SE, but for this purpose, we can achieve
        the result we want by choosing the order of the terms to be
        inserted and by blocking out uninteresting places.  (The possi-
        bility of odd orders -- including identifying initially different
        places -- is the main use of full lambda, which presupposes that
        the terms to be inserted are in a given order already, a condi-
        tion we need not worry about).  The biggest problem with making
        full use of this insertion procedure is remembering how to do
        order n-tuples.  "John loves Marry more than Harry Sally" is
        something along the line of
        la djan ? la maris zmadu la xeris ? la selis le ka prami
        but "John loves Mary more than (he does) Sally" is simply
        la maris zmadu la selis le ka la djan prami (or se prami la
        djan). And so on.  It was nice to see that xorxes also see this
        pattern and seems to approve.  Neither the dakau nor the ke'a
        plan seems to offer any advantages over what is already in place,
        if implicit.  (But I have to admit that the possibility of trying
        to get reflexives in does suggest one use for the fuller lambda
        form; repeating the term involved seems unsightly.)
             Sorry about the tensor talk.  Over the years, the two
        factors in mathematical tensors and vectors as they apply to
        tense (and location) in language have been separated and given
        the names "vector" (direction) and "tensor" (length), probably to
        the dismay of the mathematically inclined person who started
        using them in the first place.  Lojban now has these factors
        sorted out into two lexemes for each dimension realm.  No
        problems seem to arise with the vector forms (at least none now
        under discussion).  The tensor forms do seem problematic, at
        least to xorxes (and perhaps others, since they do not seem to
        use them much).  Nor are there any mentioned problems with the
        tensor forms in tense position, the indicate a vaguely defined
        distance in an unspecified direction (apparently, in the case of
        the temporal tensors at least, the direction is taken as being
        important enough to infer from context), just as the vectors are
        pointing in directions of unspecified length and the mixed forms
        give both length and direction. In all of this, the head of
        vector/tensor is the event of the bridi, the tail is a contextu-
        ally specified origin.  For vector forms as sumti tcita, the head
        is still the event of the bridi and the tail is the origin de-
        fined by the tagged sumti, corresponding to the hypothetical role
        of the hypothetical contextual axis-register in the form underly-
        ing the tense-location form (and the other adverbial forms).  The
        same seems to be true for the mixed vector-tensor forms.  So, by
        parity of reasoning, the pure tensor forms should be defining a
        displacement without direction from the named event/location.
        And the spatial tensors seemed to be used in this way: "near to",
        "around", "a ways away from", roughly. So, why don't the temporal
        ones mean the same thing, roughly various approximations to the
        time of the event named?  While the uncertainty about direction
        is more troublesome in the temporal cases than in the spatial,
        the forms still have some uses and should be kept.
             Two related issues come off of this. 1) Xorxes claims that
        the combination of the 0-vector and a tensor does not make sense.
        I am inclined to think it is the moist useful form of the vector-
        less tense form.  The mathematical 0 vector is in reality (that
        is, outside mathematics) not a 0 at all, but an indefinite range
        in the appropriate dimension(s).  as the old saying goes, "When-
        ever I say 'now' it is already then" and "Only I can stand here":
        by the time I utter the flag of the instant, the instant has
        passed, for someone to come to my here is for them to be coexten-
        sive with me.  So, in fact, we use "here" and "now" (and "at".
        and so on) in very unmathematical ways.  But we sometimes like to
        say just how far off we are, how broadly we are using the terms
        and this fuzz factor then needs to be conveyed.  In English we
        have a lot of "about" locutions and the like, e.g., "nowadays"
        for a moderately extended now (a few years rather than a few
        geologic eras).  I think that this fuzz factor is just what
        tensors do on 0-vectors.  Notice that _vi_ alone (which I would
        take on the usual grounds as being _bu'uvi_) is just a moderately
        broader _bu'u_, allowing something other than perfect coinci-
        dence, though expecting some propinquity.  In the same way, I
        would take _zi_ (i.e., _cazi_) as being "now in a slightly ex-
        tended sense," a close as makes no nevermind to the time.  The
        more remote forms of course allow more difference, though still
        irrelevant for the present purpose: I suppose _(ca)za_ is about
        "nowadays".
             2)The fact still remains that the tensor system is inade-
        quate (and so, I think, is the spatial vector system -- can we
        really even box the compass in lojban, let alone lay out a real
        direction (or full tensor in the mathematical sense) in three -
        or four - space, as we would need to do to, say, give instruc-
        tions to an anti-aircraft gunner?)  We can -- and once did --
        have a tensor form that lays any appropriate metric down: "three
        days," "seven feet," or whatever is needed. I take it that goran
        has proposed returning to this, as has xorxes (though, in the
        latter case, at the cost of roving other items from the internal
        system).  I think that, for clarity, we need two such operators,
        temporal and spatial, since we may want to specify in both areas
        and, although most metrics will be distinct, confusion still
        might arise (lightyears seems to confuse most people, for exam-
        ple).  The other problem is to fit all these pieces together.  If
        we are using a specific tensor but no vector, how do we specify
        the origin, how, that is, say "thirty yards from the school" or
        "three days from your birthday".  The obvious suggestion here
        (another cmavo, of course) is to have an origin marker (or two,
        time and space again) indicating that further specification is to
        come, for attempting to get origin and metric in the same con-
        struction is going to tax the grammar again.  In fact, we may be
        able to recycle some of the existing forms for some of these
        purposes; the _zi_ form seems ideal for the direction unspecified
        "within three days of your birthday" and the _Cu_ forms might
        work for "more than n units away" (not quite in line with the
        framework above but manageable).  Of course, if the vector is
        specified, the tensor does not need help.  And what about very
        specific vectors (only the spatial ones present problems except
        in really esoteric -- and highly spatialized -- tense logics)? We
        may have two or even three terms involved depending upon the
        conceptual framework within which we are operating (xyz or angles
        or bearings and altitudes or...).  Of course, all of these can be
        reduced to tuples of various sorts but spelling them all out
        seems more reasonable.  Sounds like a place for a commitment to
        some further study.
             But the tensor cases can be handled immediately and should
        be, at least to the level of assigning _xVhV_ forms for the two
        types.