proposals regarding abstractors

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab>]

Having just finished off my May mail review, I note an open grammar
issue.  Nick and Cowan agreed that abstractor logical connection and
negation (whether contrary or contradictory) seemed a bit absurd.  I
defended my original insertion of it in response to the nursery rhyme
usage "see how they run".

I do not feel strongly enough on the issue to deny removal if that is
what everyone else wants, and except for my usage, there is no
historical usage of the construction (though a minor change to the
negation paper is needed if it is deleted).  Nora doesn't much care but
thinks pc must pass on any change to the abstraction construction, it
being largely his analysis that led to its current setup.

Coupled with this would have to be some way to create nonce abstractions
(which addition would ameliorate my unease at eliminating the other
constructs), presumably with grammar along the lines of fi'o, but other
suggestings are welcome.  Cowan has previously proposed this.  I have
among other things questioned how the semantics of this would work.

For example, if we wanted to create the equivalent of "li'i" (experience
abstractor) from lifri, whose place structure is x1 (experiencer)
experiences x2 (event/state) - unlike fi'o, we have no way to build off
of a single place of lifri.  (Well technically you might say that x2 is
an experience abstraction, and indeed I've allowed for this in the
posted place structure, but before there was a li'i operator, there
would have been no conception that the abstractor could be other-than
one of the other NU values.  Thus, lifri is I believe a significant
counter-example to the discussion that nu was in some way related to BAI
tags, as posed on Lojban List recently).  The only thing I can think of
is that such abstract building would be somewhat metaphorical, which seems
flaky at best.

If this change goes further, O baseline review committee, it will be
assigned change proposal number 22, but no specific grammar change has
been implemented yet.

I will tie in with this that there has been discussion between Cowan and
I regarding the need to add a cmavo to NU to resolve the meaning of
du'u.  At one time "du'u" referred to an expression/claim/equation, but
evolved in actual usage to current mean a truth, fact or relationship
that is claimed; i.e. la'e the old value.  The difference is between "se
cusku" which is an expression and "fatci"/"se djuno" which are "truths".
I thought we had even agreed to add such a word, but I find no notes
from Cowan of the specific assignment, hence I am now uncertain.  This
poses further example problems for the above-suggested fi'o-like converter.
Though le se djuno and le fatci are both "truth" abstractions, if you start
trying to see a brivla choice as metaphorical, you might get a different
idea from "le xi'o fatci" than from "le xi'o se djuno".

(the addition of this extra cmavo assignment, whatever it was we agreed
on, is not a grammar change, but a cmavo assignment change)

Comments welcome.

lojbab