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la lojbab cusku di'e
When stating pure numbers, nothing disrupts the positional value of the digits.
Right. So why spoil this?
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.
The list I have seems a bit mixed up between PA3 and PA4, (ji'i is in PA4) but the group of these PA with similar function I think is: su'o, su'e, za'u, me'i, ji'i (at least, at most, more than, less than, and approximately). I put a tentative internal grammar of numbers on this wiki page: http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?Internal%20grammar%20of%20numbers
>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.
Yes, but I'm talking of small, three digit numbers.
>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.
Not the way I understand it.
Those usages may not have made it into CLL however (since Cowan did not agree to put in any that he was unsure of).
Good!
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.
Yes, depending on context {ji'ixanono} could mean around 599-601, or
around 590-610, or around 500-700.
And who says that people using numbers are working only with digits paji'imuno and paji'ivoso mean essentially the same thing - it is really a two digit combination that is approximate, not merely that the next digit is significant.
I would say {ji'ipamuno} in that case. I find the infixed form
very hard to parse, because you have to hear the five syllables
before you can start to parse it, instead of just the normal three.
In actual usage, Jupiter's distance from the sun is zeji'ibinoki'oki'o miles The 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 "+/-".
I would say {ji'i zebino ki'o ki'o}. I parse {zebino} as one word.
Otherwise I find it too hard to understand.
>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.
It's {ro je ci}.
>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.
The grammar allows it without an AND.
They are not in fact single numbers.
But they are. {za'ureme'ibi} can stand for the single number 4,
for example.
You are not only abbreviating a MEX operation but a logical operation within the number, and it becomes very ambiguous what modifies what
How is it ambiguous? There is no modification.
(of course, all of the quasi-numerical operators are potentially ambiguous if you push them too far)
Which one is ambiguous?
>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
Just like {roci}.
>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.
In any case, my use of {ji'i} is not based on the inadequacy of
{bi'i} for this. Even if {bi'i} was adequate, I wouldn't use {ji'i}
to break the digit stream.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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