Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited

mi joi la lojbab. joi la .and. joi la kris. cusku be di'e casnu

> > > What is not clear in this proposal, is whether you expect that xe'u
> > > is going to be normally needed, or normally ellipsized, based on your
> > > new understanding of Quine.
> > I think that it will be normally ellipsized, but that there needs to be
> > a way to distinguish between a place that's bound by the abstraction
> > and one that's just plain {zo'e}, in critical cases. The default is that
> > if x1 is empty, the {xe'u da} goes there, so "le ka dunda" is normally
> > the property of being a giver/of giving, and "le ka se dunda" is normally
> > the property of being a gift, but that doesn't HAVE to be so.
> 
> * This is already how {kea} is treated, right?

Indeed.

> * kea and xeu outside NOI or {ka..kei} contexts will yield 100% nonsense
>    (but be deemed grammatical). Is that right?

I'm not sure.  I'd rather say that I don't know what it means yet.

> * kea and xeu are both liable to need subscripts for when a relative
>   clause is contained within a relative clause or a ka within a ka.
>   How exactly does that subscripting work? - How do you know which
>   ka or NOI which kea/xeu match up with? I would propose that the
>   kea/xeu belongs to whichever NOI/ka has it in the prenex of the
>   main bridi within it.

go'i ki'a ke'o e'o

The current interpretation for "ke'a" is that by itself it refers to the
innermost relative clause; "ke'a xi re" refers to the smallest relative
clause that isn't innermost, "ke'a xi ci" is the next, and so on.

But no such machinery is needed for "xe'u da", because an infinity of 
variables is already available:

	le ka xe'u daxipa zo'u ... le ka xe'u daxipanono ... daxipa ...
		daxipanono ... kei ... daxipa ... kei

In other words, subscripts on "ke'a" are position-relative, but on "da", "de",
"di" they are absolute.

> > > >3)      le ka da de xe'u da gerku de
> > > How would we use this in a sentence?  The property refers to two
> > > entities; would it be something like {lei re nanmu cu ckaji leka da
> > > de xe'u da pendo de}?  I think {lei} must be wrong here because
> > > there's only one entity (consisting of 2 men); but {le} would be wrong
> > > too, because it would be decomposable into {le pa nanmu cu ckaji leka
> > > da de xe'u da pendo de} and {le drata nanmu ...}.
> > I agree.  But you could use the shadowy "jo'u" (of JOI) which connects
> > two entities while leaving them two:
> >        la djan. jo'u la djim. ckaji le ka [xe'u da] bruna [xe'u de]
> >        John and-jointly Jim have-the-property-of brotherhood
> 
> That seems okay, because bruna, at least here, is symmetrical. But
> what about:
>          la djan jou la djim ckaji le ka xeu da cimba xeu de
> ? O well - I suppose it says theyre related by a relationship of
> kissing, and if you want to say who kisses who, you'd just say
> {la djan cimba la djim} without fafffing around with {ka}.

This is why "jo'u" isn't really satisfactory for the job, although in fact
nothing says that "jo'u" has to be symmetrical (but I think it is anyhow).

> But be that as it may, what does it mean to say {la djan ckaji
> le ka xeu da cimba xeu de}?

I think it means that John bears the relationship kisser-of-somebody to
an unspecified person.  This is why I wanted to give "ckaji" an arbitrary
number of places depending on its x2, so that your example would be
equivalent to

	la djan. ckaji le ka xe'u da cinba xe'u de kei zo'e

> > (though the current language doesn't seem to have any selbri that
> > naturally demand other than 1-place (ka) or 0-place (du'u) intensions),
> 
> x2 of {bridi} does.

So it does, so it does.  In that case we can say:

	bridi le ka xe'u da cinba xe'u de kei la djan. ce zo'e
	Something-is-a-proposition-formed-from the-relation (X kisses Y)
		and-the-set {John, Whoozis}.

or even

	le ka xe'u da cinba xe'u de cu zilbre la djan. ce zo'e

which means the same thing.  Note the interesting assimilation of "cinba" in
your example.

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.