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Lojbab:
> >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"
Why not? Or at least, why would the former not be understood as
the latter?
> >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
Why would you want to claim that there is only one, then?
> >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)
This has been superseded by later discussion.
> > > 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
It is unfortunate that the prescription was left in this unsatisfactory
state. It's unfortunate that such an inadequate prescription was all
we had to go on for ten years.
> > > (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 was using your own gloss.
> >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
It depends. Supposing the current state of discussion of the gadri
system to be the final prescription, then one could deduce from that
that "pai broda" would be meaningless. But I am confident you could
find a way to argue that the deduction wasn't sanctioned by the
prescription and was therefore invalid.
> >(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
We can talk about one member of an ordered pair, or about two ordered
pairs. So neither "ordered pair" nor "member of ordered pair" is
an example where only one number can conceivably serve as a quantifier.
--And.