re "except" etc.

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

pc:
> Cripies!  Will you all please get with the program.  This is the
> LOGICal language!  when a question comes up, look at what logic
> does FIRST.  Logic has been dealing with "only" and "except" (and
> their correspondents in most European and not a few Eastern
> languages) for a couple of millennia.  There may be an English
> trick or two that will take some work, but the basics should be
> available and YOU SHOULD USE THEM.

This is a bit unfair. First, Jorge asked how to do "only" et al.
preserving syntactic sumti-selbri structure (e.g. making "only birds fly"
like "birds fly" rather than "all fliers are birds" or whatever).
Second, Lojban already has a word glossed as "only", which - of all
things - is in among the discursives. Turn your fire on that.

For the record, before {poo} was added, I definitely remember pointing
out that "only birds fly" can be rendered as "all fliers are birds",
with the implication that no new device for "only" was necessary.

Or do I mistake your intention? I understood you to be chiding, but
maybe you are merely exhorting us to USE the logical apparatus rather
than seek more familiar natural languagey locutions. If so, then I
agree.

> Yes, "only" is in quantifiers

Not in Lojban it isn't. It is in among metalinguistic comments, in UI,
not in PA.

> and "except" is right close to it (indeed often in the same place, since
> "only" and "none except" turn out to be about the same thing).  And had
> it right from about the beginning and could have given you short forms,
> if he (or any of us) only (another sense) knew which of the _ro (lo)
> broda_ forms were which.

I don't see how. Even if I were granted my way about which ro-lo-broda
forms mean what, I still wouldn't know how to say "only birds fly"
using the form "<only> bird cu fly".

> The thought that it was a predicate (one that contains a quatifier yet)
> is just perverse in a logical -- or lojbanical -- context.

Why perverse? It is practicable, I think, as discussion has shown, even
if it isn't worthwhile.

> "Even" does involve something more and the analysis on that is pretty
> good.  A check in McCawley might be in order for some more details and
> even that would not give a clear- cut solution to the question of what to
> do in Lojban.

I think it's clear that "even" should be rendered by a discursive, even
if we don't know which discursive.

coo, mie and