Re: forward from Greg Higley

[John Cowan <cowan@DRV.CBC.COM>]

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

> From the examples, {le ka
> do xunre} is the property of your being red, but not necessarily any
> particular instance {nu} of it at any particular time or place, so
> there's no {ce'u} there anywhere.

True.  But I suggest (see below) that the wording "proposition that
you are red" is better English, and that using "du'u" rather than
"ka" in that case is more perspicuous Lojban.

JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote:

> You can't have a {ka} without an explicit or implicit {ce'u}.
> What would it mean, other than {nu}? If you don't agree that
> a property must always be a property _of_ something, how
> do you say "property" in Lojban?

I think that a zero-adic intension ("ka" with no "ce'u" explicit
or implicit) is a "du'u".  The word "property" is too limited
to capture the full meaning of "le ka ...", which means
"proposition" when zero-adic, "property" when monadic, and
"relation" when dy-or-more-adic.

The main use of "du'u" is
to make it clear that no "ce'u" is present, and also to add
the convenience x2 place (le se du'u = lu'e le du'u).

> Right. The default place for {ce'u} is the first open slot.

Probably usually.  It's not a rule.

> > Most
> > lojbanists would use {ka ckule} and {ka se ckule} in very different
> > ways.  But again, the rules say that they are the same -- otherwise
> > we are 'favoring' the first sumti over the others.
> >
>  Yes, in a sense we are.

The rules say that both "ka ckule" and "ka se ckule" are incomplete,
because they have ellipsized places.  These places must be filled in
by extra-grammatical conventions.


--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban