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Re: [engelang] Xorban Development



Mike S., On 27/08/2012 01:20:

On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 8:13 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:

    Mike S., On 27/08/2012 00:44:


     > I just wrote a long post on this. http://xorban.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/the-semantics-of-ju/

    Doubtless I'm being obtuse (and maybe have overlooked certain crucial elements of previous discussion), but if ju has two arguments, why doesn't it just merge the eventifications of each argument into one? In other words, it would be equivalent to an eventification of je. (Indeed, why have {ju} at all? Why not just {jefa}?)


You're not obtuse.

I only have a bit of my mind attending to these discussions, so obtuseness is a risk.

The reasons are:

1. The grammar doesn't allow variables to be suffixed to operators.

OK, but that could change. The difference between predicates and operators is only syntactic; operators are a kind of abbreviation of predicates.

2. If it were allowed, usually jefa would require "a" to be bound as "la sma jefa", which adds a lot of verbosity.

"I saw there was a cat and a dog" could be "za je vskaika jefa (zi) mlti (zu) grku", where {z} is unary existential quantifier, and {ai} is the variable that when unbound means "me" (I can't remember off the top of my head what form Jorge had for it).

3. Also, the interpretation and transformation rule would have to be
determined precisely in the same way ju would have to be.

X-fa is the state of affairs in which X is the case. Is there more needs to be said than that?

--And.