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On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have had some trouble following the development discussion and final > intended result with respect to these operators. Would someone be willing > to kindly explain the exact function of these things and provide some > examples? > > ni’u …: “ni …” rather than/compared to/with respect to/as opposed to “nu > …” > > ni’ukV …: “V is rather …”, “V is … rather than not …” Consider first the class of binary predicates bbbake such that whenever "la ccca le ddde bbbake" is true then "la ccca le je ccce ddde bbbake" is also true. Let's call these predicates "(binary) quantifiers". Then notice that we can always replace "la ccca" by "la je ccca nu ddda" and "le je ccce ddde" by "le je ccce ni ddde" so that the x1 and x2 of a quantifier can always be filled by two almost identical expressions, differening only in ni/nu. Now let's define the unary version of a quantifier such that it gives the same meaning as the binary version when applied to an expression with "ni'u" standing for the "ni/nu" of the x2 and x1 of the binary version. So for example, if "mstake" means "most A are E", we can have: la prna le li ckli nlceki mstake A/person(A): E/( I/chocolate(I):like(E,I) ): most(A,E) Most people like chocolate. = la je prna nu li ckli nlcaki le je prne ni li ckli nlceki mstake = la je prna ni'u li ckli nlcaki msta Peeople who DO like chocolate are most (people). So instead of "la prna le li ckli nlceki mstake" we can say "la je prna ni'u li ckli nlcaki msta", which uses one fewer variable, but also we can say "la je frmra je se xsle pnsake ni'u drxake msta", "farmers who own some donkey and DO beat it are most (of the farmers who own some donkey whether they beat it or not)", which doesn't have a "mstake" form without repetition. Since in principle there could be more than one quantifier "ni'u" could be tied to, we can say "ni'uka" instead of "ni'u" to make sure it is tied to "msta". Unary quantifiers are not the only kind of predicates that can make use of a ni/nu comparison. Another example we considered is prfrake "A prefers E" perhaps reduced from something like prfrakeki "A prefers E from among I": lo je ckfa ni'u ldra prfra'aka "I prefer my coffee with milk." (From the choices of coffee whether with milk or not with milk, I prefer coffee WITH milk.) I think more generally "ni'u" can be thought of as a focus marker, for example tied to something like an implicit "I make assertion x rather than more general assertion y", where x is the one with ni and y the one with nu. co ma'a xrxe