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Re: [jboske] The ugly head of ni



la xod. cusku di'e

> ni ko'a xunre: the degree to which A is red
> ni ce'u xunre: the degree to which anything is red  <-- makes no
sense

I think that the idea behind ce'u in ni is that it can be used in
place of a ka in selbri which talk about a quantitative relationship,
e.g. 'la djan. zmadu la djordj. le ni [ce'u] clani', and that usage of
ni is probably as common as any (at least, I think I've seen Nick use
ni like that a lot). However, in all these cases, the property is
'bound', meaning that its presence in that sumti-place and what it's
used for is required by the selbri, so I don't think there's any
reason to use 'ni' in such cases instead of 'ka'. In any case where
'ni ce'u' might turn out to be useful 'unbound', I would use a
rephrasing.

I would likewise rephrase ce'u-less 'ni', so I agree that 'ni' should
be avoided; however, I think that there's a difference between 'ni'
and 'jei'. 'jei', at least for all logical systems I've ever heard of
(not that I'm an expert), has an upper bound which is absolutely true
(and also a lower bound, which is absolutely false). 'ni', on the
other hand, in many circumstances probably chooses from an open-ended
scale, e.g., 'ni vrude' can always be higher (though I think I would
still use 'klani' or 'la'u' for this).

mu'o mi'e .adam.