The tag {sera'a} is used much more frequently than plain
{ra'a}. That at least would seem to suggest that {srana} is
not symmetrical.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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That is much more likely to be because the keyword for ra'a,
"pertained to by", is incredibly confusing.
I, for one, have no idea what it means, and have been avoiding ra'a
for that reason.
-Robin
--
Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** I'm a *male* Robin.
"Constant neocortex override is the only thing that stops us all
from running out and eating all the cookies." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
http://www.lojban.org/ *** .i cimo'o prali .ui
> Thus in English, relevance is not perfectly symmetric, though I
> would have trouble characterizing the asymmetry.
As Master Sorcerer Seamus O Lochlainn points out in the Randall Garrett
mystery _Too Many Magicians_, it's not relevant to a gun which bullets it
has fired, as the wear on a gun is primarily mechanical; but it is very
relevant to a bullet which gun fired it -- a point extremely important
to forensic ballistics whether thaumaturgical or not.
--
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the Candensian plane, which is very much like jco...@reutershealth.com
ours, only more of it consists of Toronto." http://:www.ccil.org/~cowan
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le du'u da srana de cu roroi nibli le du'u de srana da
-Robin
I think the idea of {srana} is that it means "x1 is about x2". So for
example, if "this book is about birds" is true, that doesn't mean that
"birds are about this book" will be true, birds are not really
about books, so in this case birds pertain to the book and the book
is "pertained to by" birds, but not the other way around.
mi sanga sera'a le vi cukta
I sing about this book.
My singing is about this book.
mi sanga ra'a le vi cukta
I sing "pertained to by" this book.
This book is about my singing.
I think that is "steci". The gun is steci to the (fired) bullet, from
which it can be determined that the bullet srana the gun (and vice versa).
--
lojbab loj...@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org
That is correct. srana includes "relevant to"; it also can include "about",
but there is a place of pemci or prosa or cfika and other words that more
specifically give the "about subject" place
There is some intended parallelism between srana and steci with the latter
being more restricted (I'm not sure that steci necessarily means srana po'o
"pertains only to" but that is certainly one major sense in which it might
be understood). There is also a parallelism with ckini, which I think is
more clearly symmetric and with a specific defined relationship in x3 (the
symmetry of ckini is such that a is related to b if b is related to a, but
the x3 might have to be expressed differently if the x1 and x2 were
reversed). srana is less definite than ckini as to the nature of the
association between x1 and x2.
The reason for sera'a vs ra'a is probably English bias coupled with a
certain level of directionality in relevance. We might say that
information about the meaning of English "about" is relevant to/pertains to
(srana) the meaning of Lojban "srana". But we would be unlikely to say
that the meaning of Lojban "srana" pertains to the meaning of English
"about". Thus in English, relevance is not perfectly symmetric, though I
would have trouble characterizing the asymmetry. We left it unspecified
whether Lojban srana would necessarily have the same symmetry or lack of it.
> > mi sanga sera'a le vi cukta
> > I sing about this book.
> > My singing is about this book.
mi sanga lo pemci [selsanga] be le vi cukta
> > mi sanga ra'a le vi cukta
> > I sing "pertained to by" this book.
> > This book is about my singing.
>
>OK, that makes sense.
On the other hand,
do srana la lojban and
la lojban srana do
are both true for you (and probably most Lojbanists)
>Can you think of a better phrase than "pertained to by" that doesn't
>require re-arranging sentence order in the English translation?
"is associated with" would go with both ra'a and sera'a and ki'i and seki'i
and thus would not be distinguishing. Remember that LogFlash required
unique keywords, which is why the two would have to have different wordings
even if there is perfect symmetry. The keywords were NEVER intended to be
definitional for either gismu or cmavo - they were an artifact of the need
for unique tags in LogFlash. The two wording choices given in the cmavo
list make it clear to someone using LogFlash cued by the keyword which of
"ra'a" and "sera'a" is to be given in response, and that is all they were
supposed to accomplish.
lojbab
On further thought, it should be {le mokau} instead of {makau},
because what matters or not is "which" rather than "what".
The other way around, I think: "x2 is relevant to x1". If
the book is about birds, then birds are relevant to the book.
> Can you think of a better phrase than "pertained to by" that doesn't
> require re-arranging sentence order in the English translation?
"being relevant to ..." sounds like a possibility. Also "as a concern
of ...", or "being a concern of ..."
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 06:10:23PM -0800, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> >
> > --- Robin Lee Powell <rlpo...@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > In otherwords, is the following lojban statment true:
> > >
> > > le du'u da srana de cu roroi nibli le du'u de srana da
> >
> > The tag {sera'a} is used much more frequently than plain {ra'a}.
> > That at least would seem to suggest that {srana} is not
> > symmetrical.
>
> That is much more likely to be because the keyword for ra'a,
> "pertained to by", is incredibly confusing.
>
> I, for one, have no idea what it means, and have been avoiding ra'a
> for that reason.
mi da'i darlu ji'u tu'a zoi xy. pertain .xy .i ku'i la'e di'u nu darlu
ji'u tu'a le glico .iseni'ibo .ei cpedu fi la .bab.
--
DR. EDDIE: (defensive) They were performance pieces.
ANDERTON: You set your patients on fire!
DR. EDDIE: And put them out. Some not as quickly as others, but let's
change the subject, shall we?
So you believe that srana is symmetric?
I think that might be the case, but I think it might also mean "x1
is relevant to x2".
> mi sanga sera'a le vi cukta
> I sing about this book.
> My singing is about this book.
>
> mi sanga ra'a le vi cukta
> I sing "pertained to by" this book.
> This book is about my singing.
OK, that makes sense.
Can you think of a better phrase than "pertained to by" that doesn't
require re-arranging sentence order in the English translation?
-Robin
I think it is usually symmetric, but I would not want to make it a guarantee
lojbab
How would we say that in Lojban?
lo ka ce'u ba'o cecla makau cu na srana lo cecla iku'i
lo ka makau ba'o cecla ce'u cu ja'asai srana lo se cecla
"What it has fired is not relevant to a gun, but
what has fired it is very relevant to a bullet."
It doesn't work so well if you change the ex to "xu mi sanga
ra'a le vi cukta": !!"Am I singing, which is relevant to this
book?", !!"Am I singing (which is relevant to this book)?".
Maybe "I sing, as this book is about".
--And.
Just for the record, the second translation is wrong. The core of
the bridi is the person singing.
I am singing, which is relevant to this book.
I think that works.
-Robin