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| In a message dated 10/6/2002 8:24:50 PM Central Daylight Time, jjllambias@hidden.email writes: << I don't understand why you want to treat {ja'a} and {na} differently. >>Because they seem to function differently. {na} makes a difference in the claim made by the bridi in which it is embedded, {ja'a} does not. So, either {ja'a} is totally superfluous -- in which case, why waste good cmavo space on it -- or it is doing something useful in claiming that the bridi in which it is embedded is true. You seem inclined to the latter point of view (as am I) by using {ja'a} as one base for metalinguistic comments about truth value, what a useful {ja'a} might do. << They are both unary operators: negation and identity, or whatever they are called. (I don't see the advantage of calling them connectives either, a connective with a single connectand?) >> (To distinguish it -- only {na} is called a connective -- from what I was calling functions in the discussuion. The use of "connective" here is standard in logical literature, though not the only _expression_ used). {na} and {ja'a} don't have the same syntax, so there is no compulsion to treat them in the same way (not that even the syntax would be decisive on this). So, because of the stuff in the first response here, I think it useful to treat them differently. << I don't see why {ja'a} should make any metalinguistic claim if {na} does not make any. >> Sorry, that was how I understood you to be using {ja'a}; apparently it was meant for that fifth thing I haven't gotten nailed down yet. << [On "very" and {mutce}] >Strictly, it is a function that creates a new predicate whose truth curve >is >systematically related to the truth curve for the base predicate. Ok. But presumably a new predicate with the same arguments as the original one? >> Yes, that is, used in place of the original predicate in an otherwise identical bridi. << >As a truth >curve is about a proposition a a whole, not some part of it, so not about >the >selbri nor the sumti but how true it is that this sumti fits this selbri. >I >am not sure what you mean by a function *about* the runner or the running, >these are about the whole proposition. I mean that transforming {ko'a broda ko'e} into {ko'a mutce le ka ce'u broda ko'e} seems to treat {ko'a} and {ko'e} differently, so it doesn't look like we're applying a function to the original predicate. >> I don't really follow this one: {ko'a} and {ko'e}, by virtue of being in different places are treated differently. Or do you mean that each is treated differently from the way it was treated in the original? I'm not too clear how: {ko'a} is still whatever it takes to be first sumti on {broda}, {ko'e} whatever it takes to be second. All that has changed is truth assignment curve, i.e., different rules apply about what a given reading on whatever it is that determines truth value means for a truth value. (Unlike, say, {se} which really treats things differently -- different place of a different predicate.) << {le du'u ko'a broda ko'e cu mutce [le ka ...]} looks more like a function applied to the original predicate. >> OK, I'll withdraw the word "function," if that is giviing you problems (it is moderately common in the literature, but something else may do as well). The point remains the same, whatever the words used to describe it. |