Re: ni, jei, perfectionism

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

>>>As well as 11,7.3) and 11,7.6). Indeed in every example in which {jei} is
>>>used in a full bridi.
>>
>>I'll agree about 7.3 - we KNOW that the x2 of djuno is supposed to be a
>>fact that is known.  7.6 I am less sure of.  It seems that one can
>>be curious about an "object" as well as about a "realtionship".
>
>Maybe, but is it likely that anyone would be curious about the truth
>value TRUE? Or about the truth value FALSE?

if the truth value is unknown to the speaker then  one is not curious
about a specific truth value, but about the truth value whatever it may be.

Perhaps you can phrase this as a sumti raising of aan indirect question,
but I do not see the sumti raising as being quite so obvious, even if it
is possible to come up with one.

I also do not buy the direct substitution of equivalent sumti as necessariuly
valid in language use.  That "le jei broda du li pa" does not let me use
"li pa" freely and interchangeably with the former expression.  For example,
it would not be proper to ask "ma sumji le jei broda kei le jei broda"
even if one can ask "ma sumji li pa li pa".  Even if you decide to avoid the
numerical convention, I am not sure that if "le jei broda" is true and
"le jei brode" is also true that one can use them interchangeably in sentnces.


> >>Maybe that's not by definition, but there are clearly two meanings:
>>>one in theory and a different one in practice.
>>
>>I think that there is only one meaning, and we know this because the people
>>who make the error can recognize it is an error when it is pointed out.
>
>I'm glad you now think that. How long will it take to convince you that
>exactly the same thing goes on with {ni}?


I am quite sure that you can show me examples of hidden sumti raising with ni,
perhaps even in the refgrammar.  But I did not think that this was the
reason for our earlier debates over the meaning of ni, which as I recall
turned into a dispute over klani.  Now maybe you are talking about some other
dispute about the meaning of ni?

> >IN any event, even if you call this "contradiction" it is very clear how
>>the contradiction SHOULD be resolved.  And I suspect that if you had said
>>simply that 7.3 should have had tu'a (or fi) to be consistent with the
>>stated definition above, there would have been little or no debate.
>
>Are you sure that's not what I said? I think I and others said it more
>than once, but the issue keeps cropping up.

NO NO NO.  YOu NEVER say things that simply.  Rather you elaborate to 100
lines or more and debate back and forth with And several times in one day
about this so that no one has any idea who  thinks what anymore.

You don't seem to understand that these debates seem to usually go around in
circles and no one says anything clearly, and no one who has any authority
ever summarizes what has been said (by authoirty, I mean not authority on
the language but someone who can claim to have actually followed and
understood the discussion).

If each of these technical debates led to someone contrinuting a technical
note to a file of partial consensus on technical issues and these then
piled up for later referral, then something might come of them (other than
you an And having a perhaps clearer idea of where you stand).  But  no
such
consensus ever seems to emerge, and certainly the result is never expressed
as concisely as I did: that an example of one feature of the language
had a usage error with regard to another feature of the language which
makes it less trustworthy than other examples of the intended feature.
(I put that rather too abstractly - such consensus needs to be stated
VERY concretely).  Ideally, these results could and should be written
up as concisely as Cowan's old Change monitoring for the formal grammar,
with perhaps references to the posts/dates of posts that discussed the issue.

In short, you may have said it, but you said lot sof things and no one can
tell which of the things you said is important and or"true" (i.e. agreed
upon).

lojbab