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| In a message dated 10/11/2002 8:37:41 AM Central Daylight Time, jjllambias@hidden.email writes: << The way I see it, there are two different (but related) ni's. >> Oh dear, I was having trouble enough with one {ni}. And how will {poi'i}, which is merely a matter of convenience, help. That is, what can it say that is not somehting that could be said (albeit sometimes much less clearly -- ahah! clarity is called for here) without it? << They are exactly parallel to the two competing uses of {jei}, as {du'u xukau} and as truth value. (The {du'u xukau} use of {jei} is mercifully dead these days, but given that it is in CLL it could resurrect on us any time.) >> A consistent parallelism would be nice, but I don't see that there are two uses of {jei} as much as mistaken (or at least overly limited) understanding of how truth values work. Where is a {du'u xukau} sense of {jei} espoused in CLL (not, I see, in the place where {jei} is indexed, but that seems to be SOP for interesting properties)? Nothing I see suggests that {jei ...} is a set of values rather than the correct value -- or, with {ce'u}, the assignment function. << The use of ni I'm most familiar with is ni1, but I believe xod when he says many people use it as ni2. First, let's consider ni1: la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u dunda John differs from Mary in their giving. That could mean a lot of different things: they differ in what they give, they differ in who they give to, they differ in how many things they give, they differ in how many people they give to, they differ in how often they give, etc, etc. >> OK -- and, of course, whether they give at all. << We have ways of being more precise: la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u dunda makau John differs from Mary in what they give. la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u dunda fi makau John differs from Mary in who they give to. la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u dunda xokau da John differs from Mary in how many things they give. la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u dunda fi makau John differs from Mary in how many they give to. la djan frica la meris le ka ce'u xokauroi dunda John differs from Mary in how many times they give. Now, {ni1} is less specific than the last three, but more specific than {ka} because it selects only the xokau-properties. So: la djan frica la meris le ni ce'u dunda John differs from Mary in how much they give. Which could mean, in how many things they give, to how many people, how many times, etc. We could in general say that {ni1} = {ka sela'u makau}, if {sela'u} can pick any quantity related to the situation. >> I assume "how many the give to" should be {xokau da} not {makau}. I would, in this context, read {le ni ce'u dunda} as "how giving they are," which may be any or some combination of several of the {xokau} properties. Or something quite different as well, namely bringing in factors like (to start with easy ones -- almost {xokau}) what percentage of their worth they give or (moving away) how cheerfully they give (sliding toward something based on {ka ko'a}) or some impressionistic combination of all these and other factors (why we need the second place of {ni}). I'm not quite sure how {la'u} (and so {sela'u}) works, but, again, ni1 seems to be a function {ka sela'u makau}, if anything like {du'u sela'u makau}, is going to give a set of properties, not a single value. << Now {ni2} is not a du'u/ka, it is a namcu. Instead of being a du'u containing a number, it extracts the number from the situation decribed by the du'u. We have {poi'i} to extract a participant in a relationship, but it only extracts sumti, so we can use {mo'e ce'u} as the quantifier variable: li ci ni le djan dunda 3 is how many/much John gives. This could be: li ci poi'i la djan dunda vei mo'e ce'u da 3 is the number of things that John gives >> Shouldn't this be {poi'i la djan dunda mo'e ke'a da}? Using {ce'u} both breaks the pattern of {poi'i} (so far as I understand it) and introduces a new complexity that we don't need til the next layer (with {frica}, say). (I trust you that {mo'e} does what is needed here.) << or: li ci poi'i la djan dunda fi vei mo'e ce'u da 3 is the number of people John gives to. or: *li ci poi'i la djan vei mo'e ce'u roi dunda 3 is the number of times John gives. (This one is ungrammatical, but I can't see a grammatical way to put a sumti variable with roi) or any other possible number extractable from the situation. Conceivably, this number could even be a truth value: li pimu poi'i la djan ja'a xi vei mo'e ce'u dunda 0.5 is the "ja'a xi"-value of "John gives". so that we could say that {jei} is a special case of {ni}. (Also in the case of ni1, we get the indirect question jei: {du'u ja'a xi xokau}. >> Again a set not a value? Exactly what the context is here is getting hazy. << In summary: {ni} is vague as to which quantity of the event it extracts. It has two versions: ni1 = du'u sela'u xokau ni2 = poi'i sela'u ce'u >> Well, you've shown it was ambiguous rather than vague, but I think vague is more nearly correct. Unless (the blessed ambiguity of these terms) "quantity/ amount of [bridi]" is read -- as one possible explanation of {ka} is for "quality exhibited by [bridi]" -- as "the/a quantity mentioned/present in [bridi]" (depending upon whether [bridi] is a sentence/proposition or an event). That strange reading of "quality" is the only thing I can see to connect {ka ko'a} with {ka ce'u} in a single concept, rather than the two concepts that come by taking "quality exhibited" once as that mentioned in the _expression_ and once as that characterizing the event. On that strange reading (and I still think it is one for {ka ko'a} and hence for {ni2}) le ka ko'a broda = le ka ce'u broda = brodaness. |