Re: Logical Vulcan take II
Saul Epstein 
Fri, 9 Jan 1998 08:50:03 -0600

From: Rob Zook <rzook*informix,com>
Date: Wednesday, January 07, 1998 5:53 PM

>In a complex logical argument, one could do as one does in prepositional
>calculus, and assign a variable to a statement. So I propose using the
>Vulcan consonants, plus uu, as basic variables: puu, tuu, buu..,etc.

Might they, when writing, do as we do and use just the consonants' letters?
So, p, t, b, etc.? But when reading something so written, or speaking ex
tempore, pronounce any isolated consonant as itself+/uu/?

>To elucidate this with an example, I had to come up with a few more
>grammar words. So let's back up a second, and see how we could do
>simple categorical logic with Vulcan:
>
>All Vulcans have green blood
>Spock is a Vulcan
>Therefore, Spock has Green blood
>
>ats whl'q'n,dii krupat'oram plak'at
>its whl'q'n spok,cee
>aaz spok krupat'oram plak'at
>
>ats, its, and aaz act as "syllogistic operators", if you will.

    [snip]

>I created the suffix -dii to indicate "universal affirmation", and the
>-vu suffix indicates "particular affirmation". They correspond
>to "all" and "some" respectively. While ni- by itself would act as
>a "universal negation", and ni- + -vu as "particular negation".

    [snip]

>The -cee suffix I created to act as a categorical non-logical
>connective. It roughly means, "is a member of a catagory/class".

So, your original syllogism translates something like:

    MAJOR Vulcan-UNIVERSAL blue-green blood-GEN
    MINOR Vulcan Spock-MEMBER
    CONCLUSION Spock blue-green blood-GEN

Unfortunately, the construction "Vulcan blood-GEN" makes "Vulcan" a
possession of "blood." The genitive suffix works a lot like the English
apostraphe-S. So it should probably be attached to Vulcan in the major
premise and to Spock in the conclusion.

However, this is great stuff. My only suggestion would be to make these
connectives prefixes, to help distinguish them from syntactic markers. In
other words,

    ats diiwhl'q'nat krupat'oram plak
    its whl'q'n ceespok
    aaz spokat krupat'oram plak

    MAJOR all-Vulcan-'s blue-green blood
    MINOR Vulcan include-Spock
    CONCLUSION Spock-'s blue-green blood

>Now we can move to prepositional calculus, or symbolic logic to see those
>variables I spoke of earlier, in more detail. In formal Vulcan a
>statement can also be considered grammatically correct if it consist of a
>valid argument form. One such form, for example, we call Modus Ponens. It
>consist of the form:
>
>p --> q
>p
>---------
>q
>
>Or in English: "If p then q. p therefore q". Where p and q both
>represent full statements. Now I will propose some more Vulcan
>grammatical particles, ci, ic and ^. Ci and ic act as starting and ending
>parenthetical particles. ^ acts as a seperator between the premises
>of a non-syllogistic argument. For example:
>
>"If Spock is a Vulcan then Spock has green blood. Spock is a Vulcan,
>therefore Spock has green blood."
>
>puu ci whl'q'n spok,cee ic
>tuu ci spok krupat'oram plak'at ic
>puu'ek tuu'ek ^ puu'a aaz tuu

Just to see if I'm following this...

    P (Spock is a Vulcan)
    T (Spock has green blood)
    P-if T-if; +P ergo T

>This works equally well with all of the standard argument forms.
>Let's do another example - a Hypothetical Syllogism:
>
>p --> q
>q --> r
>--------
>p --> r
>
>"If Spock is a Vulcan then Spock has green blood. If Spock has
>green blood then Spock is not a human. Therefore if Spock is a
>Vulcan then Spock is not a Human."
>
>puu ci whl'q'n spok,cee ic
>tuu ci spok krupat'oram plak'at ic
>buu ci komi spok,nicee ic
>puu'ek tuu'ek ^ tuu'ek buu'ek aaz puu'ek buu'ek

I'm a little confused by your use of singular entities in these examples.
<whl'q'n spokcee> seems tied a little too closely in form to "Spock is a
Vulcan." Could we use your universal affirmation marker to indicate "the set
of?" So,

    P (diiwhl'q'n ceespok)
    T (spokat krupat'oram plak)
    B (diiqomi niceespock)
    P'ek T'ek ^ T'ek B'ek aaz P'ek B'ek

or

    P (SET-Vulcan MEMBER-Spock)
    T (Spock-GENITIVE blue-green blood)
    B (SET-Terran NOT-MEMBER-Spock)
    P --> T; T --> B; ergo P --> B

or

    Let P = "The set 'Vulcan-Humanoid' includes a member 'Spock.'"
    Let T = "Spock's blood is blue-green."
    Let B = "The set 'Terran-Humanoid' does not include a member 'Spock.'"
    P implies T; T implies B; therefore P implies B.

    [snip]

>Also one can easily
>tell the mood and figure of each syllogism. The above would be: AII-1
>form of syllogism, which is valid, and therefore grammatically correct.

The logical forms in the earlier examples also stand out well. Presenting an
argument looks much like a geometry proof, consisting of a series of
theorems used to transform given expressions into the conclusion. In this
case, propositions are assigned to variables and then a known logical form
is stated using the same variables.

    [snip]

>Which may make
>Vulcan a little harder for humans to learn (not necessarily a bad thing,
>IMHO).

I agree completely. Now I have a bit of a question. How would this apply in
a conversational situation, something like...

Speaker A: ats ci diiwhl'q'nat krupat'oram plak ic. its qa ci diiwhl'q'n
            ceespok ic?
Speaker B: itsa.
Speaker A: aaz ci spokat krupat'oram plak ic.

Or?

--
from Saul Epstein
http://www,johnco,cc,ks,us/~sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at