Re: multiply defined cmavo -response to Jorge

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

la lojbab cusku di'e

> >> 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.
> >For example?  Would that really be possible?
> We do already.  Any place a selma'o appears in two different parts of
> the grammar it "means" two different things.

Well, any word used in two different sentence then "means" two
different things, for that matter.

> We just try to make sure that the usages are consistent enough
> semantically as to not lead to confusion.

Of course I agree with that. I certainly don't want two semantically
different definitions for {ke'a}. I argue that the use of {ke'a} in
relative clauses is the same or very close to its use in properties.

> Thus we have SE+BAI which is
> arguably different from SE+BRIVLA and SE+JA.  We have ME+SUMTI+MEhU, and
> the same construct with MOI attached (can't remember what it means, but
> it solved a problem %^).

Ugh! I had forgotten about that. I think it was introduced to be able
to say "the (n+1)th". At least that's the example given inthe MEX paper.
Yuck.

> Either ME or MOI or both is changing meaning
> there from other occurances.

And after all that you are worried about my harmless use of {ke'a}!!!????

> But here you are using the same cmavo in the same grammatical rule to
> mean something unrelated depending on context,

No I'm not! Certainly not depending on semantic context, and even
in the different sintactic contexts, the two uses of {ke'a} are more
or less the same.

> and you have effectively
> said that there exist cases where you would have an ambiguity with
> multiple ke'a in a single sentence that would HAVE to be resolved using
> subscripts,

If I said that, I retract it. With And's smart use of the prenex all
need for subscripts becomes obsolete. Besides, that is nothing new.
The problem of embedded {ke'a}s already exists even if you stay with
relative clauses only.

> where each is interpreted by a different rule while occuring
> in the same grammatical context.

I certainly never said that. I gave one single general rule for all
cases, but now I recant even from that. And's method is much more
natural, and need not even be given as a rule, since it is
self-evident.

> Do you see why I feel that is pushing
> one step too far.

No, I don't really see it.

You argued not long ago that {ke'a} outside a relative clause would not
be meaningless nonsense. If someone only knew {ke'a} from relative
clauses, and they hear the perfectly grammatical:

        ko'a ko'e zmadu le ka ke'a sutra

I am sure that they would know what was meant. If you can think of any
other interpreation I would like to hear it. Given that, the proposed
{xe'u} would be duplicating the already existing {ke'a}, and with what
benefit? {ke'a} is already rarely used in relative clauses, and it would
be equally rare in properties. The cases where you would need to use
the prenex explicitly are highly embedded sentences that will be hard
to understand no matter what scheme you use.

Jorge