ke'a

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

Jorge:
>One of the arguments against {ke'a} is that sometimes we may need to
>keep open more than one argument place.  The solution is to use
>subscripts:  {ke'axi.abu}, {ke'axi.ebu}, {ke'axi.ibu}, {ke'axi.obu},
>{ke'axi.ubu}.  I use a, e, i, o, u as subscripts because that's how
>Lojban usually orders argument places, cf. vo'a, vo'e, vo'i, vo'o, vo'u,
>and fa, fe, fi, fo, fu.  I'm not sure how the order of the arguments
>would be handled with {xe'u}.

And the argument against this is that there is no guarantee that the
lambda-containing abstraction is not itself in a relative clause, in
which case the resolution of the subscripts is ambiguous.  For the sake
of saving a cmavo, the complications of resolution aren't worth the
trouble.

>In practice, none of the above complications arise much.  What's more,
>it is rare that even one {ke'a} need be explicited at all, just as with
>relative clauses, so why introduce a new cmavo to learn?  The current
>language can cope with the problem with elegance and without any
>additions.

I don't see it as elegance.  If we want to play this kind of game, we
could save lots of cmavo by defining them to mean different things in
different situations.  Kind like English prepositions.  Very toljbo.

If you have to learn multiple schemes of resolution, then you have even
more workload than in simply memorizing the cmavo.  Memorizing words is
far easier than memorizing how to use them in different contexts.

I don't think of "ke'a" as just keeping open a place.  I think of it as
a pronoun referring to another level of subordination. lambda is not a
pronoun per se in that it does not stand for any specific value; it is a
true variable.  And it refers to abstraction levels and not
subordination levels.

>> My objection to {duu} is that it is always singleton in extension,
>> so should have sumti rather than selbri status.
>
>Maybe it would have made more sense to have it in selmaho LU.  It would
>also have allowed for more complex propositions.

It would also have allowed for much more grammatical nonsense.  What would
"du'u mu" mean:  the proposition that "5"???

lojbab