Re: Lojban ML: Syllogism and sophism

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

Lojbab:
>>           i la djan klani li pasexa le ka litru lo ki'otre
>>           John is 176 in the kilometers travelled.
 >
 > The measurement is no more
>tied to John, the x1  of litru, than it is to the other places of
>litru connected in this specific event of travelling;

Absolutely right. In that sentence I am talking about a measurement
of John in a not very usual scale, but I could also measure something
else related to the same event. The scale would be slightly different
though.

>you could have put
>any of them in the x1 of klani by your scheme and not been saying anything
>different.

But I would be saying something different. The difference would be similar
to the difference between these two:

            la djan ckaji le ka [ce'u] klama [la paris]
            John has the property of being a goer [to Paris].

            la paris ckaji le ka [la djan] klama [ce'u]
            Paris has the property of being gone to [by John].

The same happens with {klani}. I might be interested to talk
of a quantification of John or one of Paris. The scales would be different,
even if the value is the same. The scale would be different because
the ce'u would go in a different place, just like the properties above
are different, even though the underlying event is the same.

>(e.g., if John had travelled to Paris, your sentence would
>become
>la paris. klani li pasexa le ka se litru la djan lo ki'otre

Not exactly, because {litru} doesn't have a destination place,
you have {lo ki'otre} in the place of the vehicle. But the principle
is correct:

    le vi karce cu klani li pasexa le ka la djan litru lo ki'otre [be
ce'uxire] [ce'uxipa]
    This car is quantified as 176 in the scale of kilometers travelled by
John
    driving it.

This even makes a lot of sense, since we are usually interested in
knowing how much a car has been driven, and cars do get measured
in that.

>I would contend that the fact that you can take any sumti from the ka broda
>in  le te klani and put it as le klani then means that le klani is a  sumti
>raising from an abstraction of the same sort as le te klani.

It's the same kind of thing that happens with the sumti of le se ckaji
with regards to le ckaji. Indeed, most selbri that take a ka as one of
the arguments have places for the holders of the property, which
could be any of the places inside the ka. For example:

                la djan cenba le ka djuno makau
                John changes in what he knows.

                la djim cenba le ka te djuno makau
                Jim changes in what is known about him.

The property differs only in the position of the ce'u. Any of the
arguments of djuno could go in the x1 of cenba for the same
event of djuno.

We can even have:

                le nu la djan djuno fi la djim cu cenba
                le ka [ce'u] nu djuno makau
                The event of John knowing about Jim changes
                in what is known about.

>One solution
>then would be to just use the leka abstraction in x1, but this leaves the
>x3 place of klani unfilled and possibly superfluous/redundant.

In my opinion that would not be right. You could put the lenu abstraction
in x1, but not leka. leka is a scale with open slots. That scale does not
get quantified. Just like it is not the property of knowing that changes,
but John that changes in that property, or Jim that changes in the
property of being known about, or the event (nu) of John knowing
about Jim that changes in what is known. It is usually not the property
that changes or that gets quantified. If you put the property in the x1,
then the change has to be in a property of properties, and the
scale has to be a scale that associates a number to an
open property.


co'o mi'e xorxes