[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, And Rosta wrote:
> Xod:
> > And it is ugly.
> >
> > Here is a summary of my thoughts on ni, yet again, but this time
> because I
> > was asked:
> >
> > Conceived to provide a quantitative counterpart to the qualitative ka,
>
> Was it? How do we know this?
>
> > it is redundant with jei
>
> This is what I wanted to ask about.
>
> > and it's based on a deprecated notion of ka.
>
> I don't see that this is correct or relevant.
Well, which is it? Do you not understand, or not agree, or agree but don't
care?
>
> > The deprecated sense of ka to which ni is bound was the miserable
> result
> > of the conflation between the English "redness" as the property of
> being
> > red (that's ka ce'u xunre; that which is shared by all red things) and
> the
> > amount of redness (that's jei ko'a xunre; it is 54% red). ni was
> supposed
> > to represent the latter sense, but that makes it redundant with jei.
> >
> > Up the present, my discussion with pc on this had two outcomes: one was
> > the question of whether jei ko'a xunre is actually an analog of the
> > redness of ko'a. It's an interesting question but I don't see why a
> > language that actually intended to be used would offer any other
> > interpretation of jei. In any case it's an interpretive convention, and
> > that's how I use it, and I don't know of any contrary usage.
>
> I agree that the ni/jei distinction can be collapsed, but each degree
> of ni/jei must also be associated with a property indicating whether
> it counts as a true-making degree or a false-making degree. In other
> (& hopefully clearer) words, the possible values of ni/jei can be
> grouped into those yielding True, those yielding False and those
> yielding Sorta.
What do you mean? jei, at least, really is limited to [0, 1]. ni is
unlimited, which makes it hard (but not impossible!!) to represent truths.
>
> But as far as I can see there's nothing ugly about ni per se. Rather,
> just as the ka/du'u distinction does not exist, so it can be argued
> that the ni/jei distinction can be dispensed with. We just end up
> with two redundant cmavo.
At least ka means a special case of du'u; one with su'o zo ce'u. ni
doesn't even offer us that much. And it's interpreted in all crazy ways:
if I were to describe real usage, I'd have to admit it's usually used to
count xo ko'a!
--
Before Sept. 11 there was not the present excited talk about a strike
on Iraq. There is no evidence of any connection between Iraq and that
act of terrorism. Why would that event change the situation?
-- Howard Zinn