Re: [engelang] Xorban ni'u(kV)

 

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com">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).

Okay, thank you for breaking it down in a way that I can follow.  So we have:

"Original form":
la prna le li ckli nlceki mstake

"Expanded form":
(la je prna nu li ckli nlcaki) (le je prne ni li ckli nlceki) mstake

"ni'u form":
la je prna ni'u li ckli nlcaki msta

Is it the intention that the "expanded form" be generally recoverable from "ni'u" form?  Likewise, is the ni'u form supposed to have the same logical structure as the "original form"?  What if we directly derived from original form a fourth variant:

"ni form":
la prna ni le li ckli nlceki mstake

At first blush, "ni form" would seemingly avoid some complexity, as well as the dubiousness of "msta".  It would seemingly deliver the same informational structure as ni'u form, without tampering with the logical structure.

 

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.

Or possibly "la je frmra se xsle pnsake (ni) lo drxoke mstako"? I am not sure that removing the second argument from "mstako" is an advantage over having a donkey anaphor.  The former seems more crucial to the meaning.

 

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

Yes, "ni'u" clearly works as a focus marker, but I am uncertain as to the reason not to just use "ni".  "ni" is a particle that could use the extra duty to help justify its brevity, and it seems perfectly ready-made for that duty. 


--
co ma'a mke

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