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
>
>
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