scalars and portion selbri

[djandus]

So, I'm really hoping this is straightforward.

A long time ago, I wanted to say to somepony, "I'm halfway there."

The easy way out is {mi xadba klama}

But then I tell myself, this is Lojban, we have scalar negation, we should have scalar progress be easy to express. As usual, at first I found nothing, but now I have too many options and no way to tell them apart anymore.

I get je'a, na'e, no'e, to'e. Those are cool. I don't expect them to be too useful here. However, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and tell me now if {je'a/no'e klama} makes any sense whatsoever.

What the hay is va'e? si'e? seci'u? Which, if any, applies here?

I have ideas for what they all mean, but the way they're defined altogether, especially the unaltered ci'e, confuse the hay out of me. (ciste doesn't mention scalar negation at all!)

So you know, my ideal would be a nice, succinct way to plug any number into something, like {pi xa ji'i mu} to get "I'm about 65% there." Even better would be knowing how the hay to use all these other things.

mu'o mi'e djos.

[Robin Lee Powell]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 08:15:35AM -0700, djandus wrote:
> So, I'm really hoping this is straightforward.
>
> A long time ago, I wanted to say to somepony, "I'm halfway there."
> The easy way out is {mi xadba klama}
>
> But then I tell myself, this is Lojban, we have scalar negation,
> we should have scalar progress be easy to express. As usual, at
> first I found nothing, but now I have too many options and no way
> to tell them apart anymore.
>
> I get je'a, na'e, no'e, to'e. Those are cool. I don't expect them
> to be too useful here. However, it's probably a good idea to go
> ahead and tell me now if {je'a/no'e klama} makes any sense
> whatsoever.

They look fine to me.

> What the hay is va'e?

ti noi ninmu cu so va'e lo ni mi gletu djica

> si'e?

ti pi mu si'e le titnanba .i pa va'e pu lo nu mi cliva .i ma zerle'a
.i mi catra le'o sai

> seci'u?

xu le ni dikca cu barda se ci'u lo se xampo

(that last maybe needs a ni before the se xampo?)

> Which, if any, applies here?

{lo nu mi klama cu pi mu si'e lo nu mulno} is one way I might render
the original thought. You could very easily just drop the x2; it
would be perfectly understandable (and the cu is almost certainly
unnecessary).

> I have ideas for what they all mean, but the way they're defined
> altogether, especially the unaltered ci'e, confuse the hay out of
> me. (ciste doesn't mention scalar negation at all!)

http://vlasisku.lojban.org/vlasisku/ci'e 0.o

I *guess* the idea was to have ci'e be something like "under
conditions"? Maybe ask Bob?

That's actually not too horrible, now that I think about it.

> So you know, my ideal would be a nice, succinct way to plug any
> number into something, like {pi xa ji'i mu} to get "I'm about 65%
> there." Even better would be knowing how the hay to use all these
> other things.

I'm reasonably certain that si'e does what you want.

-Robin

--
http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
.i ko na cpedu lo nu stidi vau loi jbopre .i danfu lu na go'i li'u .e
lu go'i li'u .i ji'a go'i lu na'e go'i li'u .e lu go'i na'i li'u .e
lu no'e go'i li'u .e lu to'e go'i li'u .e lu lo mamta be do cu sofybakni li'u

[Jacob Errington]

coi

{si'e} is a pretty neat hack for expressing fractions for masses:
ti fi'umusi'e lo se cukta be fi mi "This is a fifth of my book."
ta fi'uresi'e lo se kabri "That's half of the cup's contents."

{va'e}, althought I've never seen it used, seems good for rankings and such:
do pava'e .o'adai ju'o! "You're first! You must be proud!"
.i uinai do rova'e "Aw.. you're last.."

I think that {si'e} can be used to express portions of events, but I
also think that there's a sort of implicit temporal restriction. In an
event of going, there are two important measures: elapsed time and
travelled distance. We tend to measure distances in times ("It's only
five minutes away!") which is good for this use of si'e.

#1 {lo nu mi [caba'o] klama xy cu fi'ucisi'e lo mu'e mi klama xy}
"The event of I [present perfective] go-to X is 1-third of the
whole-event of go-to X"
Unfortunately that's long and repetitive. We can probably reduce this
into a tanru+jai:
#2 {mi klama jai fi'ucisi'e [lo mu'e klama]}

Additionally, when the event is finished (100%) then using si'e
becomes somewhat equivalent to mulno:
#3 {mi klama jai pasi'e lo mu'e [mi] klama} == {mi mulno lo ni klama}

Using si'e implies *time* I'd say, because these MOI cmavo don't know
of the natural implications of "going" such as distance travelled,
etc. Furthermore, in Lojban we must frequently use events as proxies
for their durations. ({mi klama ze'u lo cacra} is equivalen to {mi
klama ze'u lo nu do citka} if do eats for one hour.) We can presumably
use {la'e} to remedy this. Consider someone travelling to place 100km
away. The first 50 km took 30 minutes to travel, but the last 50km
took one hour. The temporal 50% is reached at 62.5km of travelled
distance, but the distance 50% is reached at 50km.

#4 {la'e lo nu caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

We can possibly use {ni} to get a
"natural-ish-useful-context-dependent-measure-comparable-thing" thanks
to No One Understands ni (tm):
#5 {lo ni caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

Again, using {si'e} as the main selbri distorts somewhat the original
sentence. Remember to use {jai} (and {co} ?) to achieve a more natural
(egoistical? :P) structure:

#6 {mi jai fi'u re si'e co ni klama xy} "I'm halfway to X."

mu'o mi'e la tsani

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[Felipe Gonçalves Assis]

What about {sela'u}?

[Jorge Llambías]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Using si'e implies *time* I'd say, because these MOI cmavo don't know
> of the natural implications of "going" such as distance travelled,
> etc. Furthermore, in Lojban we must frequently use events as proxies
> for their durations. ({mi klama ze'u lo cacra} is equivalen to {mi
> klama ze'u lo nu do citka} if do eats for one hour.) We can presumably
> use {la'e} to remedy this. Consider someone travelling to place 100km
> away. The first 50 km took 30 minutes to travel, but the last 50km
> took one hour. The temporal 50% is reached at 62.5km of travelled
> distance, but the distance 50% is reached at 50km.
>
> #4 {la'e lo nu caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

Or you could use "lo ve klama": "lo ca ba'o ve klama cu fi'u re si'e
lo ba mo'u ve klama".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Jacob Errington]

I had anticipated that someone might suggest {ve klama}. I believe
that the {ve klama} is constant throughout the event of going. That is
to say that I think that the route is just some trajectory connecting
the se klama to the te klama, regardless of the goer's current
position on that route. According to that belief, using {ve klama}
just doesn't work.

> mu'o mi'e xorxes
>

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[Jorge Llambías]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I had anticipated that someone might suggest {ve klama}. I believe
> that the {ve klama} is constant throughout the event of going.

But lo ca ba'o ve klama can only be a route already travelled, so the
route that goes from your starting point to (at most) the point where
you are now, which would be lo ca ba'o se klama.

> That is
> to say that I think that the route is just some trajectory connecting
> the se klama to the te klama, regardless of the goer's current
> position on that route. According to that belief, using {ve klama}
> just doesn't work.

If you are considering a single event, then I agree it has a single
route. But you can also compare the route of the event of going from
the starting point to where you are now (that's the event which is now
in the ba'o phase) with the route of the event of going from the
starting point to your final destination (that's the event that will
sometime in the future be at the mo'u point), and then the first route
will be some fraction of the second route. The full event is not now
in the ba'o phase, so you can't describe it as "ca ba'o klama".

[djandus]

Ah! Yes, I had been with la tsani on that one until I reread it all more carefully.

lo ca ba'o ve klama cu fi'u re si'e lo ba mo'u ve klama

"The path I have travelled so far is half the path I will complete."

In my case, that would have been more like

lo ca ba'o ve klama ku pimu si'e lo ve klama be do

"I am halfway to you"

It's a little verbose compared to the other options, but I like it for this:

lo do ca ba'o ve klama ku xo si'e lo ve klama be mi

Very explicitly asking for a path comparison. 

[djandus]

Thank you for the thorough responses!

On Friday, July 13, 2012 11:16:25 AM UTC-5, tsani wrote:

#2 {mi klama jai fi'ucisi'e [lo mu'e klama]}

{jai} confuses me still about 60% of the times I see it. Could you explain this usage a bit more? 

Using si'e implies *time* I'd say, because these MOI cmavo don't know
of the natural implications of "going" such as distance travelled,
etc.

This makes sense, for si'e comparing {lo nu}s to be comparing the temporal dimension. I'd even go as far as to say the subjectivity of time is implied -- that is, if I were to give the comparison, I'd be saying that I think of one event as half of the other event in some way. That would be first assumed to be in my own conception of the length of time, and if that made no sense, then some other dimension could be looked to. 

#4 {la'e lo nu caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

what on earth are you trying to do here?

({la'e} only confuses me 20% of the time nowadays) 

We can possibly use {ni} to get a
"natural-ish-useful-context-dependent-measure-comparable-thing" thanks
to No One Understands ni (tm):
#5 {lo ni caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

Oh, celestia. Please never do this. I like {ni}, and this seems like abuse. It would be referring to an amount of traveling, sure, but there's {ve klama} sitting right there...

What {ni} would be good for is if it needed to be explicit as to what scale was to be used. (time/space/length/etc) I'd totally approve of that.

#6 {mi jai fi'u re si'e co ni klama xy} "I'm halfway to X."

Yeah, aforementioned "I don't get {jai}" -- help?

[djandus]

On Friday, July 13, 2012 11:36:30 AM UTC-5, .asiz. wrote:

What about {sela'u}?

I'm thinking that could be useful for multiple progress updates.

.i lo se zvati be mi ku klani li pimu lo si'o temci

[... then, later, when asked {do zvati ma}]

.i klani li piso

Real quick, am I correct in thinking that these are parallel terms:

fasnu => nu

klani => ni

ckaji => ka

and are there any others I should know about?

[djandus]

Also, what about tanru? I can think of two interesting wordings:

.i mi pimu si'e klama

.i pimu si'e nu mi klama

[Jacob Errington]

On 14 July 2012 14:05, djandus <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for the thorough responses!
>
> On Friday, July 13, 2012 11:16:25 AM UTC-5, tsani wrote:
>>
>> #2 {mi klama jai fi'ucisi'e [lo mu'e klama]}
>
> {jai} confuses me still about 60% of the times I see it. Could you explain
> this usage a bit more?

Yep, I'm the number one jai freak, so I'm not surprised that this
might appear odd. If we look at #1, an event is in si'e1. We can reify
a sumti from it by means of {jai}, but in order to preserve, in a
certain sense, the selbri of the original abstraction, we stick it on
as a seltau to {jai PAsi'e}.

More abstractly but precisely, we must first consider the existence of
the fai-place created by means of {jai}. Then, if we apply the "tanru
rule" that I commonly use in order to construct "regular tanru" (yes,
I'm aware that tanru are blah blah blah irregular blah metaphor blah
blah don't do it blah but I don't care. My tanru are regular.) we can
"fill" the selbri of the abstraction in the fai-place by means of that
seltau.

(An example of my tanru rule. We can reduce the gismu deep structure
{mi dukse lo ni kelci la metroid} by using the tanru {mi kelci be la
metroid dukse}. In order to avoid the use of be and possibly bei and
be'o, we can use {co} like so: {mi dukse co kelci la metroid}.)

NB. {jai} has a second, completely unrelated use that concerns members
of TAG: {ko'a jai TAG broda fai ko'e} is equivalent to {ko'e broda TAG
ko'a} but is more stylish in my opinion. Aside from that, this use of
{jai} can be used to form interesting descriptions. One example from
The Codex Woldemar is similar to {lo jai gau fagri} for "firestarter".

>>
>>
>> Using si'e implies *time* I'd say, because these MOI cmavo don't know
>> of the natural implications of "going" such as distance travelled,
>> etc.
>
> This makes sense, for si'e comparing {lo nu}s to be comparing the temporal
> dimension. I'd even go as far as to say the subjectivity of time is implied
> -- that is, if I were to give the comparison, I'd be saying that I think of
> one event as half of the other event in some way. That would be first
> assumed to be in my own conception of the length of time, and if that made
> no sense, then some other dimension could be looked to.

Of course, no one expects you to use exact values. {ji'i} exists for a
good reason.

>>
>>
>> #4 {la'e lo nu caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}
>
> what on earth are you trying to do here?
> ({la'e} only confuses me 20% of the time nowadays)

The problem with {la'e} is that it's not exactly clear what type of
value it returns. In this case, I'm using it to get a reference to the
travelled distance, which is pointed to by the event of going, in my
opinion. Of course, {la'e} is extremely value, which is why I
personally prefer the {ni} version, not to mention that there's no
(official) way to reduce anything involving LAhE into a tanru.

>>
>>
>> We can possibly use {ni} to get a
>> "natural-ish-useful-context-dependent-measure-comparable-thing" thanks
>> to No One Understands ni (tm):
>> #5 {lo ni caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}
>
> Oh, celestia. Please never do this. I like {ni}, and this seems like abuse.
> It would be referring to an amount of traveling, sure, but there's {ve
> klama} sitting right there...
>

I don't see how anyone can really *like* {ni} seeing as it's broken as
hell. (As we say in #lojban, it's taken an arrow in the ni.)
One issue with formally employing ve klama resides in the fact that
according to me, the ve klama is constant at all times one event of
going. That is to say that the ve klama is the whole path connecting
the klama2 to the klama3. As xorxes pointed out, we can create a
different event that connects the klama2 to the current position of
klama1, then use that event's klama4 in a si'e comparison with the
actual event's klama4, but that seems too complicated for any
practical use. I believe that the most practical one involves {jai}
and {ni}.

> What {ni} would be good for is if it needed to be explicit as to what scale
> was to be used. (time/space/length/etc) I'd totally approve of that.

You can specify the scale if you so wish to; ni2 exists for a reason,
but there is (slight?) disagreement as to how one is actually supposed
to fill ni2 (or any scale place for that matter). I personally don't
see the point in specifying the scale. I'd expect my tavla2 to be
capable of understanding, given context.

>>
>>
>> #6 {mi jai fi'u re si'e co ni klama xy} "I'm halfway to X."
>
> Yeah, aforementioned "I don't get {jai}" -- help?
>

Because the si'e1 (must be?) is of the same type as the si'e2, then we
need events on both sides, or {ni}-values on both sides. That explains
the need for {jai}. {ni klama xy} is needed to "fill" the fai-place. I
use {co} because it adds style and let's me avoid using {be}.

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[Jacob Errington]

On 14 July 2012 14:14, djandus <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, July 13, 2012 11:36:30 AM UTC-5, .asiz. wrote:
>>
>> What about {sela'u}?
>
>
> I'm thinking that could be useful for multiple progress updates.
>
> .i lo se zvati be mi ku klani li pimu lo si'o temci
> [... then, later, when asked {do zvati ma}]
> .i klani li piso
>

That's just as precise as {mi jai pisosi'e}, but it uses {klani} which
people love to hate.

> Real quick, am I correct in thinking that these are parallel terms:
> fasnu => nu
> klani => ni
> ckaji => ka
> and are there any others I should know about?
>

I remember when I realised that too :)
mu'e comes from mulno
pu'u comes from pruce
jei comes from jetnu
su'u comes from sucta
li'i comes from lifri
si'o comes from sidbo

Formally, za'i comes from zasti and zu'o comes from zukte, but I
honestly don't see any real relation between them.

mu'o mi'e la tsani

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[Jacob Errington]

On 14 July 2012 14:18, djandus <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, what about tanru? I can think of two interesting wordings:
>
> .i mi pimu si'e klama

That's starting to look like my {jai} idea :) but I believe the tertau
should be si'e, and that {jai} is required. Of course, I don't think
anyone will misunderstand you if you use the tanru hereabove. (Okay,
tbh, they might at first, but if you give them the full structure
once, they'll probably remember forever that this tanru is a clever
reduction of it.)

> .i pimu si'e nu mi klama

"[something] is a half type-of event of me going" *shrug*. I like it
less, but people might understand. I don't think I would though.

>
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[Jacob Errington]

zo'o what about {ma ni do mi jibni gi'i darno} ;)

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