[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: [jboske] {ka'e nu} versus {du'u}



In a message dated 10/16/2002 2:08:31 PM Central Daylight Time, jjllambias@hidden.email writes:

<<


I would prefer to restrict logical contradictions to forms, independent of the
meanings of the selbri. So {ge broda ginai broda} is a logical
contradiction,
but {mi zvati la paris ecabo la romas} is not, just because {ko'a broda ko'e
e ko'i} is not a contradictory form. This is because meanings of selbri are
much more fluid than the meanings of logical forms. We can always come
up with wild situations that make it true. Who is to say that it is
logically
impossible for a person to have two bodies and thus be in two places at
once? It certainly goes against every experience we have, but it isn't logic
that opposes it.

>>
OK, you talked me into it, you smooth-talking devil.  (Though I still have some reasonable doubts about even the logical possibility of a single person being in more than one place, but I don't insist that that is a purely logical , i.e., formal, matter).

<<
Maybe you mean {ro} rather than {lo}. {lo nu ko'a cumki cu na cumki} is
false with official bridi-scope {na}.
>>
I suspect I meant {le}  or even {tu'o}, but {ro} will do.

<<
I don't know what S5 is. Some hierarchy of possibles?
>>
S5 is the system that has a symmetric and transitive rellation between possib;le worlds, so that every string of modal operators reduces to its last element.  It is opposed, obviously, to S1-4 and several others in the sme sequence (B, for example).
S3 (the names and descriptions are from Lewis & Langford, Formal Logic [not sure, now that I look at it, that that is exactly the title]).  S3 is about as low as something can be an still be an alethic (truth as opposed to some other modality) logic (the relation is reflexive).  S4 and B add one transitivity, the other symmmetry, and S5 brings the two together.  You can go beyond S5 -- and off on any number of other sequences of modal logics, but S3-5 & B are the ones most closely associated with logical possibility in some sane sense.

<<
Since {ka'e} as {kakne} (or as {jinzi}) makes no sense, it is natural that
we give it a meaning that does make sense, and {cumki} seems like
the most appropriate: an event is capable of being when it is possible.
>>
I agree, since {cu'i} has been sent off somewhere else (not nearly so useful, I think -- but then I don't use emotives), {ka'e} takes over in that usage.  But, of course, the gismu list -- nor CLL -- won't have it so.  And what CLL offers for actual possibility are all corrupted with matters of actuality, which are often irrelevant.