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Re: [jboske] The ugly head of ni

In a message dated 10/10/2002 7:10:16 PM Central Daylight Time, araizen@hidden.email writes:

>>
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
.
>>
The beginning sounds right as a practical use, because it is easy to see how to measure the amount of tallness and so to translate around: {la djan. zmadu la djordj. le ni [ce'u] clani} amounts to {le ni la djan clani kei zmadu le ni la djordj clani} and can be pulled out (somehow) to saying that John is 5'10" and George is 5'8" (say).  It is less easy to do with, say, {xunre} where appropriate units are not obvious -- or agreed upon.  But it ought to work the same way. And that way is different from the way that {ka} works.  {ka} gives the property itself, not the degree to which it applies to an object.  To be sure, there can't be an amount of applying without a property and presumably (given Lojban grammar) every property applies to every object to some degree.  But that does not make a property and its degree of application the same thing.
I don't get the notion of bound and unbound -- what property is meant and what sumti place is it required in.  In the examples, no property occurs in any sumti place (in any familiar sense of those words) nor is the occurrence required, although I suppose that some abstraction is required at the third palce of {zmadu}. But then just about every occurrence of any abstraction would be "bound" in that sense, except those in which the place is unspecified -- a "normal" predicate rather than one just for abstractions.  And so few normal predicates apply to abstractions that this is bound to be a rare occurrence.

<<
I would likewise rephrase ce'u-less 'ni', so I agree that 'ni' should
be avoided;
>>
How would the rephrasing go?  What long _expression_ is going to catch the meaning of the short one here?

<<
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).
>>
Never having seen {la'u} in operation and not getting much from the official definition, I don't quite see how this will work.  Roughly, I'd guess, {ky ni ko'a broda} would be the same as {ky klani fi le si'o ko'a broda} (or maybe {le du'u/nu ko'a broda cu klani ky}) and then {ko'a broda la'u ky}, which seems a little different, coming down more on the fact that that koa broda occurs than on the degree to which it occurs.
But the {ni}/ {jei} distinction is welcomed.