WikiDiscuss

---

wrote:

> pc:
> > Terminology
> > aside, however, this seems a useful thing to
> do
> > for a logical language, moving toward (or
> away
> > from, since this is likely a deeper structure
> > grammar than the usual one — or so a
> logically
> > corrupted linguist would say) the form suited
> for
> > usual logical applications. The contention is
> the
> > usual (ultimately unsupported — in natural
> > languages) assumption of applied formalized
> > logics.
>
> In the case of Lojban the contention is much
> less
> contentious, given that it is almost purely a
> formal matter.
> I am not claiming that two sentences with the
> same reduced
> form will have the same meaning. All I say is
> that they
> have the same propositional content, but the
> meaning
> usually involves more than that. This is clear,
> as
> for example {ju'a do klama le zarci}, {xu do
> klama le zarci}
> and {e'u do klama le zarci} all have the same
> reduced form
> (i.e. propositional content) but obviously
> different meaning
> in a wider sense.
>
These last examples are just the modes that ought
also be included in what gets carried over into
the logical form.

> > For the real deep logical sturcture, it would
> be
> > good to get the modals etc. out to the front
> as
> > well.
>
> If the modals are {ka'e} and company, they are
> already

> there: that's what

> provides.
>
see above: questioning, comanding, hypothesizing
and do on all play significant logical roles.

> > This is somewhat problematic, since the
> > modals (including tense/aspect and mood)is
> not
> > grammatically, but only lexically,
> specifiable.
>
> They are specified in the same way as negation:
> {na ku}, {pu ku}, {ka'e ku}, etc.
>
I meant that there is not agrammatical way to
specify which things are modals, etc. They are
spread over half a dozen form classes, each of
which contains any number of things that are not
modal. But we can list what ought to be included
item by item (it would take a while and some
thought but it is a finite task).

> > And there may be cases where this brings to
> light
> > ambiguities — in the speaker's intentions,
> > though maybe not in the Lojban text (details
> of
> > the relative placement of tense, mode,
> negation
> > and quantification which cannot be dealt with
> in
> > the narrow confines of the preselbri slot).
>
> I haven't fully considered this yet. Do you
> have any
> examples in mind?
>
The usual cases in natural languages are mixed
prefixes: modal and quantifier, for example:
"there is some that did" and "there was something
that did" or tense and modal "it used to be
possible that" v. "it is possible that it used to
be." These are significant differences for which
the tight preselbri usually allows at most one
expression — not clearly one or the other.
Sorting those out may test the algorithms.

>
> > Is this all about the issue — which has been
> > around since the beginning of Loglan — of
> where
> > sentential negation goes? It is clear, of
> > course, in prenex form — though in the shift
> to
> > forethought connectives some problems could
> > reappear if {nagi} is allows from {na.a} etc.
> > (e.g. "only if" for conditionals).
>
> {na.a} expands to {ganai ... gi ...}.

A good rule for the purpose, but a hard one to
teach for some reason.
>
> {nagi} is not grammatical.

That was a more dubious call, since even in
Polish the distinction is often colloquially
useful (but also often just confusing).
>
> {na ga ... gi ...} is equivalent to {genai ...
> ginai ....}
> which is also {ge naku zo'u .... gi naku zo'u
> ...}.
>
> > I suppose
> > that, if we shifted everything to "reduced"
> form,
> > some rules would be clearer but that does not
> > solve the issue of where negation goes in
> > colloquial usage — the issue that has come
> up
> > over and over.
>
> Yes. But seeing what the shift rules are in
> full
> (or as much in full as we can manage) will
> hopefully
> make it easier to decide which rule we should
> to adopt.
>
I didn't know the rules were up for grabs. What
-- aside from people being too lazy or ignorant
to use them — was the matter with the set we
had? And the two obvious problems don't seem to
be reasons to change the rules.
>
> __
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
> www.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
>