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At 02:32 AM 10/10/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
The problem I have with {ji'i} as a digit modifier is that it
would be the only PA allowed to disrupt the positional value
of the digits.
When stating pure numbers, nothing disrupts the positional value of the digits. Those members of PA called PA3 in the cmavo list are abbreviations for MEX operations that are useful in stating numbers quickly, and which can be conventionally interpreted without all the baggage of MEX.
Lojban numbers are hard to understand on the fly because the positional value is only marked for groups of three.
A scientist would probably use gei for anything longer than a few digits.
The value within the group comes just from the position, and so we have to get used to identify the first digit with the hundreds, the second with the tens and the third with the units just from the three syllable structure.
I'd have to check, but I believe that other PA3 cmavo can be used to break the pattern. Those usages may not have made it into CLL however (since Cowan did not agree to put in any that he was unsure of).
{ji'i} breaks this, and
for no gain, since marking any digit other than the least
significant as approximate is pointless.
But what digit is the least significant? In exponential notation with gei, we have a convention. With regular notation, we tend to assume that a trailing zero is never significant, but it could be.
And who says that people using numbers are working only with digits paji'imuno and paji'ivosomean essentially the same thing - it is really a two digit combination that is approximate, not merely that the next digit is significant.
In actual usage, Jupiter's distance from the sun is zeji'ibinoki'oki'o milesThe bi is NOT "significant" - the range is actually 740 to 815 million miles, I believe, and I chose the midrange as an approximate, and marked the position indicating the magnitude of a "+/-".
The idea behind reji'ici is just the same as the CLL use of
{roci} for "all three",
that's the quasi-number-operator preceding the number.
and other not in CLL but that can be
derived from the same idea, like: {za'ureme'ibi} = "more than
two less than 8", or {su'oresu'eci} = "between two and three".
i.e. just putting two number expressions one after the other
indicating that they refer to the same number.
Multiple numerical expressions like that OUGHT to have an "AND" in there. They are not in fact single numbers. You are not only abbreviating a MEX operation but a logical operation within the number, and it becomes very ambiguous what modifies what (of course, all of the quasi-numerical operators are potentially ambiguous if you push them too far)
In the case
of {ji'i} the two expressions would be {re ji'i} and {ji'i ci}
and reducing the ji'i to one as no information is lost.
Except the fact that you are trying to imply two distinct operations that are ANDed
In any case, whether or not this is accepted, I don't think
{bi'i} is what we want here because it is not about an interval
but a single value within an interval.
I see your point, and am not sure whether or how we dealt with "some point in the interval" without looking more than I have time right now. I vaguely think this may have come up when mi'i was introduced though I can't find it in the archive.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org