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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Termsets



Jorge Llamb�as, On 11/09/2012 23:29:
On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 8:07 AM, And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>  wrote:
John E Clifford, On 11/09/2012 03:45:

Well, a couple of examples: parallel predicates with intertwines
strings of terms (Lojban can do this -- the rules are implicit, but
never spelled out);

What's an example of this? I don't know what it is you're describing.

My guess would be Lojban termsets. Given:

je la mlta le ldre pnxake la xrma le djce pnxake
A/cat(A): E/milk(E): drink(A,E)&   A/horse(A): E/water(E): drink(A,E)

The challenge is, is there a way to avoid repeating "pnxake"?

We could try our already defined g-:

la ga mlta xrma le ge ldre djce pnxake
A/cat(A)+horse(A): E/milk(E)+water(E): drink(A,E)

but that's missing a "respectively".

Maybe this:

lake gake je mlta ldre je xrma djce pnxake
(A,E)/(cat(A)&milk(E))+(horse(A)&water(E)): drink(A,E)

Any takers? I think it works. If it does, I'm making variable strings
after all operators official. Possibly even after those where the
vowels are not variables, so that for example we have "nake" available
as another unary-operator form.

How would you do "Some cat ate each apple and some dog ate each peach"?


I don't have the time or headspace to offer a worked-out alternative, but the direction I'd try first would be, crudely, "la fa xa sma xi smi pnxaki li je hi la sma mlta la sma ldra hi la sma xrma la sma djca [something akin to ckaji]ika", where hV creates a structured list and the ckj-ish predicate has a built in convention for the order in which the members of its x1 argument bind the x variables in its x2 argument. The meaning is something like "the relation such that xa drinks xi holds between the cat and the milk and between the horse and the water".

The "some cat, each apple" one might be harder, and is too much for me at this time of the academic year.

You might also want to think about:

(i) How to answer multiple xi wh-questions: "
A: Who drank what?
B: the cat the milk and the horse the water

(ii) clefty focusy stuff that English can't do:
"It was the cat the milk that _ drank _"
(= It was the cat drank the milk and the milk the cat drank)


--And.