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Sent from my iPad On Oct 14, 2012, at 12:01 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote: > 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 > > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > >