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Nick: > I am making comments on realisation, for which I hope you forgive me. > > > 1. Kind. Requires specification of the property that > > defines the Kind (e.g. "is a snake", "is a pair of > > snakes", "is 75% of Oregonians", "is the stereotypical > > Greek Australian"). > > I suppose the last two are Kinds somehow, and I guess we can try and > make sure they are sayable, but they still strike me as odd. For any property there is a Kind, that is all. In an ideal world, it would be as easy to talk about the Kind that embodies that property as about "da" that has the property and "it" that has the property. > > 2. Collective of everything with property P. Requires > > specification of P. There could be an optional noi-statement > > (i.e. incidental: asserted (truth conditional) but non-defining) > > of the cardinality of the collective. > > > > 3. A specific Collective. Plus optional noi-statement (e.g. > > of cardinality or of the Superset the specific Collective > > belongs to). Plus optional voi-statement (i.e. unasserted > > (nontruthconditional) description (e.g. of cardinality or of > > the Superset the Collective belongs to). > > > > 4. Named Collective. The Collective is identified by name > > (cmene). Plus optional noi- and voi-statements (of cardinality > > and/or Superset). > > I assume these are (if I can use for now my favoured LAhE-based > solution) LAhE2 ro lo broda, LAhE2 ny lo broda, LAhE2 la broda). Perhaps: tu'o LAhE2 ro lo broda, tu'o LAhE2 ny lo broda, tu'o LAhE2 ro la broda. > At any > rate, something that the current language doesn't quite state, but that > is encompassed in the semantic range of piroloi, pinyloi, lai, and will > not require drastic change to the language to implement. > > > 5. Is-a-Subkind-of. Binary predicate taking Kind as one argument. > > This is not even a cmavo change (although it could be done with a cmavo > predicate), and I have no objection to it. We should take it as a given that almost everything can be expressed by means of full brivla. The utilitarian dimension to the gadri system involves deciding where to add shortcuts. In my analysis, "This branch resembles two snakes" is "two subtypes of Mr Snake", & my judgement is that this is a sufficiently ordinary thing to want to say that it warrants having a shortcut to say it. In saying this in a Lojban forum, I am bearing in mind the entire weight of usage to date, which shows that all users prefer inexactitude to longwindedness, but that Lojbanists do make an effort to learn the ready-packaged devices the grammar provides for them. In other words, if the grammar provides a succinct way to say "two subtypes of", then Lojbanists will learn and use it. If the grammar doesn't, then Lojbanists will just say "two snakes" & not worry about saying what they don't mean. > > 6. Subset-of: "is n% of" (= "contains x out of every y members > > of"), where n can be left vague and have the meaning "is a subset > > of". Binary predicates taking 1-4 as one argument. > > This can be either a tweak to ce'i, or a related MEI cmavo, possibly > with two numeric arguments, probably not (fractions should do). And where does that leave piPA, so'e, "re le ci", & other forms that belong in the paradigm of (6)? We'd also need a de-broken form of MEI. > > 7. Each-member-of. -- Distributivizer. Applies to 1-4. > > Either this is lu'i, or lu'i converts its referents a single > invididual, whereupon we would likely use a different LAhE. (I'm sure > there are alternatives within the baseline, but they will likely be > cumbersome; e.g. ro lo pafi'uro loi...) We certainly need to settle > which of the two alternatives lu'i means. We need more details of this, and also of what ro means when applied to all gadri & LAhE. > > 8. Existentially quantified variable (Collective). Plus optional > > noi/poi-statement of cardinality or Superset. > > I don't understand. Is this da-as-collective as distinct from > da-as-individual, or something else? No. It's ordinary da. IMO the simplest gadri system is achieved by not distinguishing between Collective and Individual, i.e. by treating Individual as a singleton Collective. The distinction can be made by pa versus za'u as a cardinality indicator. > > I'm tempted to suggest how this could be lexicalized, but there > > doesn't seem much point in succumbing to this temptation, since > > the result would not bear any resemblance to the status quo. > > I don't agree with either point, I'm afraid. Sorry. But with your > permission (and even without :-) ), your desiderata enter my to-do list. I'm not saying that the things on my list can't be expressed. I'm saying that the things on my list constitute a minimal set of building blocks in terms of which everything else can be expressed. It's a gadri system based on these building blocks that bears no resemblance to the status quo. Remember too that I wasn't saying that the Lojban system should be based on these building blocks. --And.