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la xod. cusku di'e > > 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. > > > > How is that different from "la djan. zmadu la djordj. le ka ce'u clani"? > le terzma is the property in which they differ. Using ni and calling it a > "quantity" as opposed to a "property" adds no information. If the property > can be quantified, then ni is applicable, but if it's not, then the > concept is zmadu can't apply to it anyway. Indeed, I don't see any practical difference. 'ni' can simply be used instead of 'ka' in selbri which require quantification of the property place. I was merely commenting on how I've seen it used. > I don't understand the significant of 'bound'. Why does the meaning of > the tergi'u influence the meaning of ni used in the sumti? 'Bound' was Nick's term, I think, back when 'ce'u' was being discussed. The meaning of the selbri (the selgi'u, I suppose) requires a property in some places, and in some of those cases where it requires a property, it requires that the property as it is applied to one of the other sumti be quantified. In those cases, you could use 'ni' instead of 'ka' to indicate the quantification (and that is a usage that I have seen) but you could equally well use 'ka', since the quantifying is provided by the selbri. > > 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). > > > [0, 1] contains an infinite number of reals. Inside that interval can be > mapped the unique vrude-ness of every atom in the universe. I don't see > why restriction to [0, 1] should give one a sense of limitation. Because if you ever assign the truth value/quantification of 1 to a given bridi, there can never be something higher (more true/more), but I can certainly conceive of quantities which are open-ended and can always be increased no matter how large they are. mu'o mi'e .adam.