Re: Meaning of BAI tags

["Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" <lcrocker@MERCURY.COLOSSUS.NET>]

> The reason I prefer it is that I think it would make lojban text
> easier to parse and logically analyze in software.  I think a rule
> that says:
>           A djuno B C D bai E
>                 implies
>           A djuno B C D
>
> would be wicked useful, because we could apply rules concerning "djuno"
> and "bapli".  Without such a rule, it's hard to know how the sentence
> could be analyzed.

But that defeats, as I understand it, the purpose of BAI in the first
place: to add places to a predication that aren't specified by its
brivla.  If the information in a BAI is only incidental, then it should
be expressed that way--with a relative clause or a new bridi.

Sentences like "I opened the door with my foot" and "I taught math
in Spanish" should clearly be false if I used my hand or spoke English,
but "open" has no tool place, and "teach" no language place, so we
must add then with BAIs.  If we don't give the BAI places full status
as arguments to the predication just like the brivla places, there's
no other way to form these new predications except awkward tanru.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC