Re: [bpfk] polysemy of {nai}

[la gleki]

On Friday, December 7, 2012 8:51:43 PM UTC+4, John Cowan wrote:

la gleki scripsit:

> {na'e} says that we are somewere at another point but on the same scale.
> {no'e} says we are in the middle of the same scale.
> {to'e} says that we are at the opposite point of the same scale.

Right.

> {na'i} says that we are outside this scale (i.e. this predicate
> relationship)

"Na'i" says that there's something wrong with the way the statement is
formulated.  "Na'i I drove my car to work today" is a true statement,
since I don't have a car and in fact don't drive.

> {na}. Here I have a problem. According to what I draw {na} means that we
> are not at this point of this scale and may be even outside this scale.
> So for me {na} is (warning! bad grammar follows) {na'i ja na'e}.

"Na" is not about scales either.  It says no more and no less than that
the rest of the sentence is untrue.  "Na'e censa" is "secular", but
"ti na na'e censa" does not reduce to "ti censa" logically, though it
may do so pragmatically.

> Anyway, I want all types of negation to fit on the same scheme.

They don't, and aren't intended to.  Lojban's round pegs will not fit
in your square holes.

Then explain me how one {nai} can give birth both to round pegs and square nails?

I showed on my table that {na} means either {na} or outside the scale. This is what you are saying
(""Na" is not about scales either")

--
John Cowan  co...@ccil.org   http://ccil.org/~cowan
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[John Cowan]

la gleki scripsit:

> {na'e} says that we are somewere at another point but on the same scale.
> {no'e} says we are in the middle of the same scale.
> {to'e} says that we are at the opposite point of the same scale.

Right.

> {na'i} says that we are outside this scale (i.e. this predicate
> relationship)

"Na'i" says that there's something wrong with the way the statement is
formulated. "Na'i I drove my car to work today" is a true statement,
since I don't have a car and in fact don't drive.

> {na}. Here I have a problem. According to what I draw {na} means that we
> are not at this point of this scale and may be even outside this scale.
> So for me {na} is (warning! bad grammar follows) {na'i ja na'e}.

"Na" is not about scales either. It says no more and no less than that
the rest of the sentence is untrue. "Na'e censa" is "secular", but
"ti na na'e censa" does not reduce to "ti censa" logically, though it
may do so pragmatically.

> Anyway, I want all types of negation to fit on the same scheme.

They don't, and aren't intended to. Lojban's round pegs will not fit
in your square holes.

[John Cowan]

la gleki scripsit:

> Then explain me how one {nai} can give birth both to round pegs and square
> nails?

As the Red Book explains in Section 15.7, the meaning of "nai" depends on
the selma'o of the word it is attached to. It is contradictory negation
(na) when attached to NU, A, GIhA, JA, GA, GUhA, GI, PU, FAhA, BAI.
It is scalar negation (na'e) when attached to JOI, BIhI, ROI, TAhE, ZAhO.
It is polar negation (to'e) when attached to COI, UI, CAI. When standing
alone as a text-0, it is vague in meaning (like English "No.").

--
John Cowan co...@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan

It's the old, old story. Droid meets droid. Droid becomes chameleon.
Droid loses chameleon, chameleon becomes blob, droid gets blob back
again. It's a classic tale. --Kryten, Red Dwarf

[la gleki]

On Saturday, December 8, 2012 7:04:21 AM UTC+4, John Cowan wrote:

la gleki scripsit:

> Then explain me how one {nai} can give birth both to round pegs and square
> nails?

As the Red Book explains in Section 15.7, the meaning of "nai" depends on
the selma'o of the word it is attached to.  It is contradictory negation
(na) when attached to NU, A, GIhA, JA, GA, GUhA, GI, PU, FAhA, BAI.
It is scalar negation (na'e) when attached to JOI, BIhI, ROI, TAhE, ZAhO.
It is polar negation (to'e) when attached to COI, UI, CAI.  When standing
alone as a text-0, it is vague in meaning (like English "No.").

Here we go again.... that what i started with....

[Annie]

what is the red book?

*** This Email was sent by a student at School for the Blind.

[Jacob Errington]

It's one of the CLL's many names.

* The Complete Lojban Language

* The Red Book

* The Codex Woldemar

* The Book

It's the language's complete grammar description. Orika Okrent, who wrote "In the Land of Invented Languages" says that the CLL is one of the most complete grammatical descriptions of any constructed language. Calling it "The Red Book" stems from the colour of the cover, whereas "The Codex Woldemar" which is just an overly fancy way of referring to it, comes from its author's name, John Woldemar Cowan.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

On 11 December 2012 10:39, Annie <park....@asb.gaggle.net> wrote:

what is the red book?

*** This Email was sent by a student at School for the Blind.

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[Annie]

You could have just said "CLL".

Sent from my iPod

[Jacob Errington]

Sorry... I just think it's cool that it has a whole bunch of names and well, we're also known for giving long-winded answers for no real reason, haha.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

[Annie]

oh wow. what other dames do you have for that book? speaking of cll, it looks to me, from chapter 5, that a bridi is a sentence without the selbri. am i understanding this correctly because if so, why would you want to use a bunch of sumti without a selbri? the sentence wouldn't make s5se, it seems.

Sent from my iPod

[Luke Bergen]

Which passage in chapter 5 gave that impression?  From what I understand, the bridi can be thought of as the whole sentence.  The selbri is the relationship word that pulls the whole thing together, and the terbri, which are often sumti, are the places.

"sentence" isn't quite the right word, actually, since you can have bridi nested within a sentence e.g.  "lo gerku ku nelci lo nu pinxe lo djacu".  I would say that the whole thing is a "sentence".  The whole thing is also a "bridi".  "pinxe lo djacu" is also a bridi.  And "lo gerku", "lo nu pinxe lo djacu", and "lo djacu" are all sumti as well as terbri.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's one of the CLL's many names.

* The Complete Lojban Language

* The Red Book

* The Codex Woldemar

^ I've never heard it called that one before. Where does that name come from?
 

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Jonathan Jones]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's one of the CLL's many names.

* The Complete Lojban Language

* The Red Book

* The Codex Woldemar

^ I've never heard it called that one before. Where does that name come from?

NVM. Next time II'll read the entire message first.

 

* The Book

It's the language's complete grammar description. Orika Okrent, who wrote "In the Land of Invented Languages" says that the CLL is one of the most complete grammatical descriptions of any constructed language. Calling it "The Red Book" stems from the colour of the cover, whereas "The Codex Woldemar" which is just an overly fancy way of referring to it, comes from its author's name, John Woldemar Cowan.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

On 11 December 2012 10:39, Annie <park....@asb.gaggle.net> wrote:

what is the red book?

*** This Email was sent by a student at School for the Blind.

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--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Jacob Errington]

I don't know where in chapter five the cll might give the impression that the bridi excludes the selbri in some way. A bridi is a predication, and a predication can be a sentence, but it isn't necessarily one. Much like in natural languages, you can nest "sentences" in Lojban. 

e.g. .i mi djica lo du'u lo mudri cu se fagri -> "I know that the wood is on fire."

The catch is that not all sentences in Lojban are bridi {.i ui} is a valid sentence, but it is not a bridi.

Strictly speaking, the simplest bridi is just a selbri, e.g. {.i citka}, as all the sumti are therefore implied to be filled with {zo'e}. But a bridi *must* have sumti.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

[Annie]

It says it at the beginning ofthe chapter. I can't quote it directly, but it says something about the bridi being a relN, andthe selbri telling what relN is being referred to.

Sent from my iPod

[Annie]

It's the first sentence, but maybe I misunderstood. what's a terbri, and how can you identify a bridi if it's not a sentence? what is predication? i thought that it would be stating the predicut, what the subject is, or does.

Sent from my iPod

[Luke Bergen]

So, a sentence is really just a bunch of words grouped together.  In fact, I'm not 100% sure that the CLL goes into long depths to define a sentence (thought it's been a while since I've read through it).

Think of a bridi as being a specialized verb + some nouns to give more information about that verb.  So in the same way that in english you can have a sentence with many clauses, in lojban you can have sub-bridi and such in a sentence.

Maybe this will clarify.  The definition of "bridi" is:

x1 (text) is a predicate relationship with relation x2 among arguments (sequence/set) x3.

So, when someone talks about a "bridi" they're talking about this relationship.  In a bridi the "selbri" (the x2 of the above definition) is the relationship word, the "terbri" (x3 of the above definition) are the noun-like things that act as parameters to the relation.

 

e.g.  Take the english sentence "Rex likes when Paul pets him".  If I were trying to describe this using lojban grammer I would describe "Paul pets him" as a bridi, because it's the selbri "pet", with two arguments "Paul", and "him".  I would also describe the whole thing as a bridi whose selbri is "likes" and whose terbri (arguments) are "Rex" and "when Paul pets him" (since this is an event, it can be thought of as a single noun-like-thing that's attached to "like").

Not sure what is meant by "predication", I'd need to see it in context.

Sorry, that got a little long winded.

[Ian Johnson]

A "sentence" for Lojban purposes is what's between a pair of I and/or NIhO.

Bridi, in my opinion, are slightly more subtle than the gismu list makes them sound. You have a relationship (itself an abstract concept rather than a word/phrase) and >= 0 arguments, and when they are assembled together they form what in English is called a proposition or a predication, and in lojban is called a bridi. Again I should say that the gismu list doesn't agree with this, but this is pretty standard usage at least among the IRC lojbanists.

To be precise: {lo du'u mi klama lo zarci cu bridi}, whereas {lu mi klama lo zarci li'u jufra}.

mu'o mi'e la latro'a

[Annie]

what do you mean by a predicate relation? is that basically the subject, or is the subject one of the arguments?

Sent from my iPod

[Pierre Abbat]

On Wednesday, December 12, 2012 19:50:29 Annie wrote:
> what do you mean by a predicate relation? is that basically the subject, or
> is the subject one of the arguments?

The subject is one of the arguments. In English, and accusative languages in
general, the subject is the first argument, the direct object is the second,
and the indirect object is the third (even though it precedes the direct
object in the sentence). There is at least one four-argument verb in English.
Other arguments can be added with prepositions, which are selma'o BAI in
Lojban. Lojban also has the jai ... fai method of adding an argument, which
has no equivalent in English.

Pierre
--
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci