[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
At 01:47 PM 1/10/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
xod: > On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Robert LeChevalier wrote: >> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/10519) Thereafter, the three> > of them often use "tu'odu'u" and "tu'oka". Adam also recognizes and uses > > tu'odu'u. xod seems resistant > > Yeah. And Lojbab is right > > We are arguing over tu'o = "elliptical, any number" vs. "vacuous, no > number". But the "no number" interpretation isn't appropriate for du'u. I > still claim what's wanted for du'u is "one is the only conceivable number > here", which should be clear from the context (the fact that it's a du'u) > and elided away I don't agree. For one thing, a refusal to quantify could in certain contexts be interpreted as an invitation to glork the appropriate quantifier,
Let us see the contexts.
in the sense that in certain contexts a speaker who says
{zi'o catra ko'a} may be interpreted as communicating {zo'e catra
zi'o}.
I don't understand either an agentless killing of someone, or a agentive killing where no one is slain, so neither of these communicates anything to me.
"zi'o catra ko'a" != "ko'a mrobi'o"
But secondly and more importantly, what grounds are there for saying that there is exactly one du'u broda? Do we know what criteria we can use to tell that there is one and not two? No, we don't.
As Cowan says in another post, the quantifier is a distinction without a difference. It doesn't matter how many du'u broda there are since the number of du'u broda has no relevance to anything.
If one is the only conceivable number, then we don't really know that we are looking at one. It is something that simply can't be counted. Hence the validity of tu'o.
But tu'o does not mean "cannot be counted", which is a different meaning that "mo'ezo'e", "mo'ezi'o" and any combination of the two. There are quantifiers that cannot be counted (infinity, zero, fractions, irrationals, indeed all but the positive integers)
> The ma'oste uses the unfortunate, confusing phrase "null operand",
It uses the keyword "null operand", a device used to render LogFlash usable. It is NOT unfortunate that it was used; it is unfortunate that people persist in reading more into the keywords than was ever intended. We are writing a dictionary (and it wasn't written earlier) precisely because the keywords were not considered a definition.
> (I can't check the CLL on tu'o, since lojban.org is down.) If you did check CLL you'd see it unequivocally supports only "no number".
No, it unequivocally supports "null operand", since that phrase was chosen specifically to cover the RPN role of tu'o.
I think we all agree that (a) we want a way to say "any number", (b) we want a way to say "no number", and
I am not convinced that a/b are true, and that we will not open a can of worms by trying for either of those meanings, especially since "number", "operand", and "count/quantifier" are overlapping meanings and all words in PA can serve in all roles.
I doubt that byfy needs to rule on what "pai broda" means
(c) BF should specify
the Right ways & rule on the meaning of {tu'o}.
> Or we could create a cmavo for "is the only conceivable number", use that
> alone for "no number", and annoy me by appending it to pa to denote the
> quantification of du'u
Can you think of cases where some number other than pa is the only
conceivable number?
Infinity and zero both seem plausible with little difficulty coming up with examples. Even limiting contexts to pure mekso, if I strain a bit, I find that two is the only conceivable number of elements in an ordered pair.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org