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At 04:59 PM 1/13/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > zi'o is appropriate > > > if no value makes sense at all as in Cowan's example of an > > > untranslatable joke > > > >That's not really what zi'o means, but I don't want to get into > >a discussion about this now. I'm not sure whether you know what > >it means and just described it poorly: you said that zi'o catra > >is meaningless to you, which isn't a good sign > > zi'o means what CLL and the cmavo list say it means until/unless the byfy > changes it. I'll be satisfied if Cowan (or someone else) gives me a > practical example of when one would say zi'o catra, and it would indeed > have something to do with catra and not merely morsi binxo Why must it have something to do with catra and not merely morsi binxo? Catra is a 2-place predicate.
Actually it is a 3 place predicate, but I've been ignoring that fact since I understood that you were (I understood your zo'e in x3 as zi'o (QED %^)
(No I do not advocate that this should be the case; we are simply wrong to not be talking about zi'o catra fi zi'o when we want to compare with morsi binxo. I contend that a bottle without a lid simply is not a botpi NOR a structural modification thereof (though I vaguely get Cowan's explanation of zi'o as a mathematical projection). A better example: a prosthetic foot that isn't attached to/inalienably part of anyone is not a jamfu; it is not "footing anyone". It is something else - foot-shaped-object, metaphorically less of a foot because it has the wrong number of places, than a teddy bear is a bear, since the latter can be understood as "a bear of species 'teddy'" having all the places filled.)
Catra be fa zi'o is a different predicate.
1. That depends on the precise definition of zi'o being used.2. At best zi'o makes a one-place version of catra, a different predicate which still must be some flavor of catra. There is nothing inherent to the LANGUAGE that says that catra is related in terms of morsi binxo - they also are different predicates. We would tend to assume pragmatically that zi'o catra has something to do with catra because they are the same word (but a different construct). (zilcatra is a different word, of course, and what it means is presumably either defined by jvojva or is adhoc). zi'o catra has no OBVIOUS relationship to morsi binxo, because they are different predicates AND unrelated words. It takes knowledge of the word definitions and pragmatic knowledge of the way the real world works in order to claim that they "mean the same" (which really should be that they entail each other). 3. Since zi'o can include zo'e according to Cowan, zi'o catra MUST entail zo'e catra, and it "must have something to do with catra and not merely morsi binxo". Unlike a relationship between catra and morsi binxo, which is determined by the relationships between the two concepts, the relationship between zi'o catra and zo'e catra is structurally part of the language (again according to Cowan). 4. Orthogonal to all of the above (and making everyone's position wrong %^), Nora said something (mentioned below, but my response fits here). "fi'o catra fe'u zo'e" attaches a "slayer" place to a given predicate. Lojban dogma is that attaching a BAI place does not make it a different predicate - that it is in fact a normal part of a Lojban predication to be able to add extra tcita sumti at will and that any Lojban predication has an arbitrary number of additional places that can be so added, with the number of potentially added places being infinite through the use of FIhO. Key points: we say that adding places with FIhO does NOT make it a "new predicate", but just merely additionally specifies information to refine the "same predicate". But "(zi'o catra) fi'o catra [fe'u] zo'e" is absolutely identical to "zo'e catra", thus by Lojban dogma "zi'o catra" must be the same predicate as "catra", but the latter is more completely specified.
Slightly off topic, because Nora is brainstorming as I plow through everyone's messages, based on my muttered comments:
Nora asks, what do we do with "zi'o blanu". She suspects that Xod would like to contemplate that as a Whorfian mind-blower; the projection analysis of zi'o would seem to indicate a meaning of some sort.
Nora also claims that ellipsis (and thus possibly zo'e) can include "noda". Her reasoning: Take any true predication. This predication has an infinite number of ellipsized BAI/fi'o places. It is possible to want to add a place with sumti value noda: "fi'o broda [fe'u] noda" (her specific example "A man is a man with no exceptions -> "lo nanmu cu nanmu fi'o -exceptions [fe'u] noda") Now is this "fi'o -exceptions zo'e" or "fi'o -exceptions zi'o" or something else? [At this point reading what I was writing, she stopped me and said she wasn't sure about how this works with quantification and negation, but has to go to sleep, so I will leave it to you do decide whether the thought experiment leads anywhere. In my case it led to point 4 above.]
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