Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited

la .and. cusku di'e

> > > Subscripting should, I opined, be at most a mere convention, while my
> > > prenex proposals should be honoured with the status of Grammaticalized
> > > Rule.
> > So they are.
> 
> Do you mean they have been adopted by Lojban Central?

Well, no.  But your prenex proposal, using "ko'a" etc., has been put into
the latest version (as yet unreleased) of rel.txt, which is about .01 notch
below Lojban Central adoption.

> > But subscripting is sometimes more than a convention, as in "sexixa"
> > (the x1-x6 transposer) and "daxire" (the second in the infinite set
> > of distinct da-cmavo).
> 
> Fine. I see that, and see no objection to it. But the kea-subscripting
> idea is in the relative clause paper, and there I think it should be
> more clearly flagged as Mere Convention.

Hmm.  I need to ponder this point, and perhaps revise my subscripting
examples in text.txt.

> > I suppose we could save the face of Lojban by (artificially) construing
> > the "zo djan." in "mi se cmene zo djan." as the baptizing instance.
> 
> But in fact {suo zo djan} and {ro zo djan} are okay, aren't they?

Yes.  The default is probably "su'o", so I suppose we are OK again.

> > > > > I think I'd like to argue that "abstraction" has no meaning, at least
> > > > > not beyond the n-adic ka/duu.
> > Why?  There are many abstractions reified by Lojban.  Numbers are
>  abstractions,
> > sets are abstractions, masses are abstractions: at least, none of them are
> > concrete objects.  Quine argues that the concrete objects and the sets are
> > all that is really required, but we need not follow him.
> 
> I thought "abstraction" necessarily involved a bridi.

I meant "abstract objects" rather than "abstractions".

> > > > The point is that every other abstraction can be expressed as a "su'u"
> > > > with an appropriate x2:  "nu" is "su'u ... kei be lo fasnu", "jei" is
> > > > "su'u ... kei be lo niljetnu", etc.
> > > I think I get it.
> > >    lo suu broda kei be lo ganxo
> > > is equivalent to
> > >    lo ganxo poi kea duu broda
> > >    lo duu broda kei poi kea ganxo
> > No, I don't think so. It's the asshole-abstraction of
> > something-unspecified being a thingummy, whatever that is.  But it is not
> > necessarily itself an asshole: "le nu broda kei cu na fasnu" can be true,
> > although not by your reading of "nu".
> 
> I'm gobsmacked by that. How can "lo nu broda kei cu na fasnu" be true?

I'm not sure whether your difficulty is with the denotation of "nu" or of
"fasnu".  Lojban ontology is such that there exist certain objects,
called "abstract objects", which can have various things predicated of
them.  The abstract objects called "events" can each have a "nu...kei"
predicated of them; in fact, they are called into existence because
of the "nu...kei" predicates.  (To be is to be the value of a variable:
so "da poi nu ... kei" says "there exists an event abstract object ...")

However, the gismu "fasnu" is true only of such event abstract objects
as actually occur.  So "da poi nu la .ualas co'eli'o kei zo'u da fasnu"
is false because Wallace wasn't President, but the abstract object
encoding "Wallace was President" still exists, and we can say things
about it other than "da fasnu".  This does not mean that "da" can refer
to a nonexistent object (there are no nonexistent objects); it means that
it can refer to abstract objects which encapsulate non-occurring events.

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