Re: ka'e

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

>Lojbab:
>>Thinking over what I said about the meanings of CAhA cmavo, and seeing
>>that Jorge wrote a few days ago that ca'a implied ka'e, I want to opine
>>that in general we would use ka'e to talk about innate capabilities of
>>the sort that can manifest themselves without substantial alteration of
>>their nature.
>
>The problem I see with this is that it seems to rely on the innate
>capabilities of the x1sumti only.

I understand your concern, and us non-predicate-language native speakers
need to be careful as a result.

>>We would not say that "lo remna ka'e vofli" even if we
>>define that what someone does in an airplane or even more limitedly, a
>>human propelled airplane is "flying".
>
>Would you say {lo remna ka'e cadzu}? Wouldn't it depend on what
>--More--
>goes in the x2 place?

As with most such cases, the ellipsized x2 has some value les
s releavnt to the
claim, which is consistent with the predication being true.  In the case
of this example, x2 is probably "da".

>I'm not comfortable with the concept of innateness.

I think it is not a particularly "Western" concept.

>Is a
>sidewalk innately walkable by ants, for example?

Yes.  and indeed most surfaces can be described as innately6 walkable.
Butthere are exceptions (surface of the sun, of a cell wall, a frictionless
surface).

>>This is a restriction on the meaning I stated above for ka'e, since not
>>everything that can happen can do so by the nature of the relationship
>>or its participants.
>
>The problem is how do you decide whether a relationship holds
>"by nature" or by some other reason.

I think that to answer this we have to get used to thinking of properties of
predications (loi ka broda) instead of properties of sumti.  It seems clear to
me that those properties we use to determine the truth of a bridi are loi
ka bridi, and  are the innate properties of the bridi.

Now it seems that if a bridi would hold except for the value of one sumti
(it would hold with some specific na'ebo le sumti, then we would ascribe the
flaw in the bridi to that sumti.  If in turn that particular sumti, out of all
the sumti of its "kind" makes the bridi false, while others of the kind make
it true, then we would see the referent of that sumti as failing to uphold
the innate properties of the typical member of that type.

>From this we get some idea what are innate properties of sumti referents,
and in turn can figure out innate properties of bridi.

I don't (yet) have the way to go directly to the innate properties of the
bridi.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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