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Re: [jboske] The ugly head of ni


la pycyn cusku di'e


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.


6.3)  mi ba jdice le jei
       la djordj. cu zekri gasnu [kei]
   I [future] decide the truth-value of
       (George being-a-(crime doer)).
   I will decide whether George is a criminal.

Deciding a truth value is either meaningless or useless.
"I decide truth value 1" means nothing. A dfferent thing
is to decide that a given proposition has a given truth value:
"I decide that 1 is the truth value of 'George is a criminal'."

So 6.3 is really being used instead of {mi ba jdice le du'u
xu kau la djordj cu zekri gasnu}. For example: {mi ba jdice
le du'u la djordj ja'a zekri gasnu}.

This use of {jei} is happily out of fashion now.


<<
        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.


Yes. That would be {la djan frica la meris le ka xukau ce'u dunda}.


<<
        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.

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.
>>
I assume "how many the give to" should be {xokau da} not {makau}.


Yes, correct. (I did too much copy-pasting.)


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.


Yes, that's how I read ni1 too.


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,


I think it is roughly this:

   broda sela'u ko'a -> le nu broda cu klani ko'a

Which specific scale is used can be specified with {tela'u},
or with the second place of {ni}. So (again roughly):

ko'a ni1 broda kei ko'e ~= ko'a du'u broda sela'u makau tela'u ko'e

(I say only approximately equal because I'm not so sure about issues
of scope when it comes to BAIs.)

The important thing is that ni1 is a kind of du'u (and so when
it has a ce'u a kind of ka).


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.


I think we had this discussion before. Probably we will not
reach an agreement if you don't agree that the x3 of frica
takes a {du'u ...kau...}.


<<
{ni2}
        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 don't think it matters. You can define {lo poi'i ke'a broda} as
{da poi ke'a broda}, or {lo poi'i ce'u broda} as {lo ckaji be tu'o
du'u ce'u broda}. I don't see any significant difference in
the functions of ke'a and ce'u.


(I
trust you that {mo'e} does what is needed here.)


I don't. :) I would never use {mo'e} in real life, but we can
use it here for illustration purposes.


<<
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,


It is ambiguous between ni1 and ni2, but in turn each of them
is vague as to which quantity of the event gets selected.



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]"


If it can be equated to a number, it has to be something like
that, since a du'u is not a number.


(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.


I'm not sure I follow, but I stick to using ko'a always with
(overt or implicit) ce'u.

mu'o mi'e xorxes



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