reply to And #1

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>Happening is essential to eventhood.  But not all imaginable happenings
>happen in this world.  So we can define nu as an imaginable happening.
>But why then is xrula not defined as an imaginable flower?

xrula is a predicate which can be a potential/imaginable rather than
"real-world" relationship.  Therefore the x1 of xrula can indeed be an
imaginable flower.

>There is then a question of how to distinguish between imaginable and
>actual events.

Pragmatics (with general presumption of "reality" based on maxim of
relevance, or explicit CAhA,

>  The objects of our desideration can be imaginable
>events, but causes, for example, need to be actual events.

Not necessarily.  Many an SF novel hinges on cause and effect
relationships based on quite non-actual faster-than-light travel.

>> >But {lo nu}
>> >would be no improvement, for it might be that the taxi will
>> >never come. Better would be "mi XXX zei denpa le du`u lo
>> >plejykarce....": "I wait for it to become the case that there
>> >is a taxi that arrives here".
>>
>> Yes, perhaps that would be clearer, although I think it would
>> be too restrictive to say that nu could only refer to events that
>> actually happen.
>
>I don't see why du`u can't serve for these imaginable events.  True a
>du`u is not an imaginable event, but it is easy to define denpa as "x1
>waits for x2 [du`u] to become the case", whereas I can't easily think of
>a good definition of denpa is x2 can be an imaginary event.  Maybe "X1
>waits for x2 to become actual".

Whether du'u could serve is unknowable because that is not the purpose
of du'u. du'u is an operator that forms a predicate that relates a
proposition (x1 - I hope I am not using the wrong term for x1) to the
expression of that proposition (x2).

nu is an operator that abstracts a predication into a selbri with only
one sumti - which is the occurance of that selbri, whether potential or
actual or imaginary or whatever.  Implicit in "nu" eventhood is some
kind of time-signature, which we classify with the 4 aristotelian
subcategories of events, but "nu" does not claim which of these is
applicable merely that one or more of them applies.

It is possible that lo du'u and lo nu could have similar semantics,
except that lo du'u is used primarily to relate to how a predication is
expressed or communicated rather than to its existence and/or possible
effects on other predicatable events.  This difference is significant
enough to make questions of similarity in semantics moot.

It is perhaps plausible that in some style of Lojban all of the x1s of
the various abstractors could be replaced by the x1 of du'u, but I
suspect that necessary information would be lost and have no desire to
even contemplate the analysis.

>> >I say "XXX zei denpa", because "denpa", like virtually all other
>> >intentional gismu, is defined in a different, and ultimately
>> >illogical way. The only solution I can see, if the baseline is
>> >respected, is to abolish the use of these gismu and use
>> >alternative correctly-defined selbri instead.
>>
>> Could you explain why they'd be ultimately illogical?
>
>Because logically they involve an embedded proposition, yet
>syntactically they don't.  They mean "x1 brodas it to be the case
>that...".

I guess I don't see how embedding a proposition is illogical provided
that the embedding is recognized to always be part of the
definition/usage of the word.  We have some gismu that explicitly
involve sumti-raising as well.  Presumably at some future time some
Lojbanist should be able to expand the definition of "gasnu", for
example, to render the embedded proposition in a more standard form.  It
is USEFUL to be able to sumti-raise, and thus we can expect people to do
so - so we prescribe both syntactic and lexical means to express such
raising.  But the raising is marked and the logical structure is thus
overt.

>Another question:  if "da nu do bajra" is true even if you never
>actually run (-hecause I can imagine you running), is "da gerku do" true
>even if you are not a dogbreed, so long as I can imagine you as one?

The former is true as a statement of a potential because I have the
potential to run, though of course you need context to establish that
the elliptical CAhA is that of potentiality rather than actuality.  The
latter is not true (to me) because I cannot imagine a potential for me
to be a dogbreed (nor even a dog).

Jorge:
>Now, something can begin to occur but never reach its end.  So the x1 of
>cfari should really be a {du'u} as well:
>
>                le du'u mi klama le zarci pu cfari gi'enai ku'i mulno
>                My going to the market started to happen but wasn't
>completed.
>
>I couldn't use {nu} because there was no full event of me going to the
>market.

So what.  Obviously the completion of the full event is conceivable or
you would have no means of knowing that it did not complete.  So you
need the CAhA of unrealized potential on the nu to explicate the
ellipsis.

>What's more (horror of horrors!) the x1 of {fasnu} has to be a {du'u},
>otherwise we couldn't say things like:
>
>                le du'u mi klama le zarci pu noroi fasnu
>                My going to the market  never happened.
>
>Yes, I think it makes sense to say that {nu}s refer only to realizations
>of the {du'u}s that do happen.  I'll try to make a list of the gismu
>definitions that would need updating if this insight of yours were to be
>made official.

It won't be %^).  In my opinion, you are merely seeking to define out of
existence the need for "nu" and replacing it by the equally nebulous
"du'u".  I have no more idea what it means to have an expressible
proposition (lo du'u) "happen" or "not happen" then I do for an
incomplete event to happen or not happen.  But the latter is remedied by
potential tenses that allow one to talk about events without those
events necessarily even starting, much less completing.

xorxes:
>Yes, that's a good way to put it.  {nu} seems odd in that it's the only
>selbri in the language that works unmarked for hypotheticals.  (Well, I
>guess not the only one, {lo se djica} and the like would also be
>hypotheticals.  But why should these be unlike mlatu, as And points
>out.)

I don't see any of the abstractions as requiring marking for
hypotheticals.

----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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