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la pycyn cusku di'e
> Your move has the unpleasnat effect that the truth
> value of "X is tall" never reaches 1 (have to leave room for
someone taller
> coming along) -- and maybe not 0 neither. Even with fuzzy values,
which meet
> your problem somewhat. As a practical matter, we generally do draw
lines on
> these issues and, if further distinctions are needed, shift to
modifiers like
> "very," with a longer 0 and a shorter 1 and a shallower incline.
I think it would be useful to work out how we can make these
distinctions in Lojban. In some cases, we work with only
two truth vales but allow a greater or lesser degree of
proximity to the boundary between true and false:
FALSE almost | barely ... rather ... very ... indeed TRUE
"He almost did it": It is false that he did it:
truth value of "he did it" = 0
"He barely did it": It is true that he did it:
truth value of "he did it" = 1
For these situations a definite boundary is crucial, because
otherwise being close to the boundary makes no sense. Fuzzy
truth values don't help here. In Lojban we can do these with:
ja'acai: very/indeed (true, definitely)
ja'aru'e: barely (true, just made it)
naru'e: almost (false, just missed)
nacai: not at all (false, definitely)
In other cases we really want fuzzy values. A fuzzy value
of .9 does not correspond to "almost true", it corresponds
to something like "quite true". I don't see a problem in
not having any statements that would get a full 1 or a full
0 for selbri like "is tall" under this fuzzy modality.
We can do this in Lojban with {ja'axipiso} and the like.
Presumably indefinites like {ja'axipiso'i} will also give
this kind of fuzzy statement.
ko'a ja'axipiso'u clani
He is not all that tall.
ko'a ja'axipiso'i clani
He is rather tall.
ko'a ja'axipiso'a clani
He is plenty tall.
Would that work?
mu'o mi'e xorxes