Re: whether (was Re: ni, jei, perfectionism)

[Carl Burke <cburke@MITRE.ORG>]

At 06:08 PM 12/16/97 GMT+0, you wrote:
>Carl Burke:
>> >> mi zanru le du'u melbi
>> >>
>> >> I approve of the fact that (something is) beautiful.
>> >
>> >No. "I approve of the proposition that something is beautiful".
>> >
>> >"the fact that" is better rendered by "le nu".
>>
>> So 'the fact that' is explicitly transient?
>
>No, but nor is nu.

I disagree.  Transience (used to be) the _essence_ of {nu}.

>> From descriptions and
>> usage, I would expect an unlabeled bridi to be a 'fact': {mi jmive}
>> "I live/lived/will live",
>
>Right. I agree.
>
>> and abstractions to be modifications or
>> different aspects of that fact ({le nu mi jmive} "My living/lifetime"
>> or {le mu'e mi jmive} "My coming-to-life").
>
>Right. But that's an abstraction within a sumti.

Same same.  There's a full bridi inside that abstraction-in-a-sumti,
and the top-level bridi is embedded within the utterance context.
(Besides, it isn't 'abstraction WITHIN a sumti', it's 'abstraction AS
a sumti'; it may be nested within {SUMTI} in the refgram, but you don't
treat a predicate differently just because it's an argument to another
predicate, do you?)

>{mi jmive} is equivalent to {nu mi jmive} and is not equivalent
>to {du`u mi jmive}. {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive} both mean that
>if you examine the world you will find a bit of it which is
>your life, a bit of it that makes {le du`u mi jmive} true.

If this is true, than any effort I previously put into learning
this language has been wasted; may as well just throw any lojban
work prior to the book publication into the trash.

I disagree that {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive} are equivalent,
although I do see that they both differ from {le du'u mi jmive}.
I can see that the predicate formed from {mi jmive} with {du'u} can
unify with both {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive}; it could unify in some
sense with {ka mi jmive} or {ni mi jmive} as well, since those
are all aspects of the same base bridi, but the only thing that
really _matches_ {le du'u mi jmive} is {mi jmive}.  This example
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, of course, since there
aren't any variables in the predication abstract; I'm not seeing
the utility of talking about the predicate as a predicate, anyway,
but I can accept that you might want to do so in rare instances.
(less rare in some contexts, not at all present in others).

Now that I think about it, how does the {du'u} abstraction differ
from the {brodX} gismu family, which construct predicates?
Shorthand?

>> Is 'nu' now polysemous
>> between 'an actual fact' and 'an event or [transient] state'?
>> Has the language mutated that drastically in ten years?
>
>Only if {nu} ever meant "an event or transient state".

Which it did, and still does according to the cmavo list,
although 'event' has been removed from its definition.
It's a state/process/achievement/activity, binding an
unabstracted bridi (which is timeless and eternal) into
time -- there's implicit forward movement, a start, and
an end.  (As opposed to the achievative abstraction, which
is only concerned with the change in state at some time.)
Without the abstractor, you're forced into using the tense
system, which doesn't give you the same meaning.

>Nowadays it means "a situation, a state-of-affairs", and hence
>is much the same thing as "an actual fact".

If that is the case, what is the need for it at all?
More importantly, what abstractor has taken its (vital) place?

--
Carl Burke
cburke@mitre.org