[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Thu, 10 Oct 2002 pycyn@hidden.email wrote:
> xod:
> <<
> Do you intend your usage of ka to abstract out EVERY possible quality
> associated with that bridi? Or just one or two of them, and without a clue
> to the reader which one(s)? Concrete example: Godzilla's Walk is
> historical as well as being earthshaking.
> >>
> Sure, why not? Though "associated with" is a little too vague and "bridi,"
> as noted, is ambiguous. I'd say "all the properties of an event described by
> [bridi] (a linguistic item). If that gets too messy, I'd start to develop the
> notion of nuclear properties for this purpose as well (I'm not perfectly
> sure, for example, that the fact that I thought about Godzilla's walk is a
> property of that walking).
>
> <<
> This is why I've repeatedly insisted that the ce'u-less ka, which is your
> "item 1" above, is ill-defined. You yourself admit that it refers to a
> class of properties, not a single property. What use is it?
> >>
> Actually, I'm now in the position (which I hope to work my way out of soon)
> of holding that {ce'u}-less {ka} makes pretty good sense, but that {ce'u}'d
> {ka} is flaky. The use of {ce'u}-less {ka} is precisely to refer to the set
> of properties had by some situation. Althoug I admit that it is odd that we
> cannot as readily refer to the set of properties had by any other kind of
> object: what is the shortest way to say that Sherlock Holmes has exactly the
> properties ascribed to him in The Canon? It seems bound to be longer than
> saying, using {ka}, that this explosion had all the properties of a normal
> 100 gram C-12 explosion.
la cerl,k. ckaji da poi cusku lu'e ke'a do'anai fo la cukta
le nunspoja pu simlu ro selckaji be le'e broda nunspoja
> <<
> Unless we can use ka me la godziras; "all the qualities of Godzilla", to
> mean the identity of Godzilla; something I've been hacking with su'u gy.
> co'e kei be lo kamsevzi, in my perpetual obsession with finding ways to
> avoid makau.
> >>
> And that looks like at least a giant part of the solution. But the event of
> being (an instance of) Godzilla may -- since it is an event, not a dragon --
> have properties that Godzilla does not have. And the property of being (an
> instance of) Godzilla doesn't seem to be a whole set.
As tempted as I am to use ce'u-less ka as a property abstractor, and I am
sorely tempted, it would hopelessly break the old usage, whose users were
totally not thinking of their confused attempts at property abstraction
as anything resembling identities. This was a big problem during the old
ka pile-on of last year: how to achieve elegance doing minimal violence to
old, misguided writings.
--
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