Re: Logical Vulcan take II (and other assorted sundries) Rob Zook Fri, 09 Jan 1998 17:22:30 -0600 At 02:49 PM 1/9/98 -0600, Saul wrote: >From: Rob Zook >Date: Friday, January 09, 1998 12:13 PM > >>That's what I was getting at yes. I should have been more specific. >>We should also pick some consonent, or set of consonents to use >>when speaking of an isolated vowel. > >? Do you mean a pronouncable name pattern for vowels in general, or >something to do with the variable naming system that I'm not catching? It just makes sense to me to consider the variables as an extended use of a consonent naming system, and that leaves us lacking a corresponding system for vowels. >>>>The -cee suffix I created to act as a categorical non-logical >>>>connective. It roughly means, "is a member of a catagory/class". ... >>Well, I don't have a real problem with it per say, I just did the >>two affirmation particles as suffixes to make them isomorphic to >>the -a particle which seems to be some kind of less formal affirmative. > >Oh. I've been interpreting -a narrowly as a sort of "plus" sign, whereas >these seem like set indicators. Well, as I was reviewing my knowledge of logic to present this section, it suddenly occured to me that it would be convenient to interprate the phrase, niSpock Kirka as negating the relavence of Spock and affirming the relavence of Kirk to whatever sentance you plug that phrase into. It does not change the meaning much, and it illuminates a range of functions of the -a, without changing the meaning of the ni-. That in turn led to my wanting the catagorical logic affermations to resemble the -a morphologically. Now some uses of the word "all" in conjunction with some catagorical word seem like you mean to refer to all the members in the set of things described by that catagory. But the universal affrimation has a different focus and emphisis. >>Also, the way you used include- here more closely matches what I >>mean than using a set operator on the word Vulcan here. > >Huh. I'm glad I got closer to what you mean, but I'm not sure I know what >you mean. Are you referring to my suggestion later that we mark >"Vulcan" with "all" in situations like this? Just to your later suggestion we need to add a set particle to the word whl'q'n. The "all" makes sense as an English gloss to the universal affirmation operator, but the -dii does not correspond to all uses of the word "all". >>>I'm a little confused by your use of singular entities in these >>>examples. 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, I did not read that very well the first time. The universal affirmation has nothing to do with a set, except that the word associated with it is almost always some catagory. Like All dogs go to heaven, or All Vulcans have green blood. Now that I think of it, I probably should have said whl'q'nedii'at krupat'oram plak whl'q'n-e-dii-'at krupat'oram plak vulcan-[plural]-[unv. affirm] blue-green blood. >>Well, as I said above this -cee means "in the category of or class of", >>associating some actual entity with some abstract category, like "Spock >>is a Vulcan". A set connective would have a different meaning. "Spock is >>a Vulcan" was just shorter English gloss of this. Since, Vulcan has a dD >>rule, then as I used it above Vulcan modifies the expression Spock is a >>member of a category, and thus the d must be a category. > >OK. If "Vulcan" modifies "Spock" here, then you don't need to mark Spock. >The dD rule implies it. "Tall woman," in a sentence by itself is like >English "woman is tall (or is member of set 'tall people')." Well, that's qualification, not classification. I see those as two distinctly different mental events. In qualification you associate some quality with a class. In classification, you assert some actual entity is a member of a class. Quite honestly, I would like to see a non-logical connective (I'll explain the non-logical part later so don't ask ;-) for each of those functions we all lump together with the coupula "is". At least in formal mode. >>Do you think it necessary to qualify an abstract category word as a set? >>That seems kind of redundant. Keep in mind that a word like Vulcan is >>already an abstract category, just like stone, or Human, or tree. > >True, but so far we have been operating on the assumption that single >entities in Vulcan work as they do in many languages lacking an article >system (English "a/n" and "the"). That is, roughly, means "a >Vulcan" when first used in a statement or exchange of statements, and >"the Vulcan (the same one)" thereafter. So far, the only way to refer to >the set 'Vulcan,' has been in the plural: , "Vulcans." Which >just means that looks on the surface, to me, like >Spock is a member not of the set containing Vulcans but of the set which >is some particular Vulcan -- as would be the case with an organ or a >cell. Ahh, therein lies our confusion I think. I don't believe you've mentioned this before, but even if you have I did not notice it. So, I was not making that particular assumption. I was regarding all such words as class words, or qualifier words. >One way around this would be to make deixis obligatory, so that any time >one referred to one Vulcan, even a hypothetical one, she must say "this" >or "that," etc. Then the "bare" word would be understood as a set. Well, hmm..,I think at this point we might ask if Marketa will tell us what she thinks her father meant by such words. I don't want to arbitratily make this decision, because naturally I'm biased in one direction already ;-) >Or we could come up with a word meaning "entity" -- say, -- and >when wanting to refer to an instance of an abstraction always say >something like > > qomi ceefig brax prapela. > "Terran(humanoid) instance-thing quickly spoke." Hmmm..,oddly enough this reminds me of something else I'd like to see - abstraction operators. >> Which >>reminds me, it's a little out of place here, but I suspect that when >>Vulcans would refer to a non-proper named instance of a category, like a >>specific stone, they would use a subscript particle. Which I kind of >>intended to deal with, when we got into Vulcan Mathematics, but this >>would be another good use for such a particle. >> >>So a Vulcan might say, "See how this (Stone-1) differs from that >>(Stone-2)" and thereafter simply refer to them as stone-1 and stone-2 >>with the demonstrative prefix implied. > >Oh. That would also solve the above problem, if the subscripts were >obligatory, even when discussing one instance. This is, in fact, the >origin of the English indefinite article "a/n." (From Old English "one," >which could be spelled or .) That makes sense, I was kind of thinking in terms of an article system I guess. >>This also, brings up another thing that kind of bugs me. In English, >>one can ask about 10 or so categories of questions, why generalize one >>particle to refer to them all? Why not have a particle to represent all >>of them? > >Don't have the faintest glimmerings of a clue as to what you mean. Is >that "all" in the last sentence supposed to be "each?" And if so, are >you suggesting that Vulcan should have more than one interrogative >particle? My fault. I mis-edited that line, when I was editing. That should read "Why not have a particle to represent each one of them?". So I was indeed thinking of more than one interrogative particle. I thought we can simply use "qa" as "Is is true that?" in front of a phrase(s) or sentance, as we have already seen it. But also have a particle for: "When (Temporal tense/aspect)?" "Where (Spatial 'tense')?" "How (what method should I us)?" "Why (What reasoning suppports that view)?" "What word would fit here?" and so on. I cannot think of all of them right this moment, but you should get the idea. >>BTW, A non-logical connective was what I meant when I said prepositional >>connective. I was going to post about some of them next. I have come up >>with a list, but I think I'm leaving out some possibilities. > >Did you say prepositional connective? I missed it. And, um, if cee- isn't >logical, what is it? Maybe go ahead and show us the list, so I can try to >form a better picture of the distinctions you're making... When I posted my piece on logical connectives, I finished by saying I would post more on prepositional connectives. You replied you wondered what I meant by "prepositional connectives". I could not think of a good way of describing them at the time, other than they would seperate prepositions. Now, I've kind of back tracked and reorganized my thoughts on the matter. I've dropped the idea of a seperate set of connectives for sentances, which was part of the nebulous thought behind "prepositional connective". The rest of it, which I'd still like to see, regards non-logical connectives. Non-logical because, via symbolic logic I was regarding logical connectives as exclusively: ni-, -a, -aj, -ong, -ek, and -^m. So naturally anything else, was non-logical :-) More specifically, I mean connectives regarding things like sets, intervals, quantities, and related things. So, also non-logical because they have more to do with mathematics than abstract or symbolic logic (mainly because I don't instinctually associate mathematics with logic, even though it is a "Logic of Numbers"). Here's what I've thought of so far: Sets: er- in a set with, unordered set link, "and also" but forming a set. oc- in a sequence with, an ordered set link, "and then" ib- respectively, ordered distributed associate with a previous set iig- union of sets oor- intersection aal- cross product, a cartesian product of sets Intervals:(used in pairs only) ru- unordered interval, "between x and y" he- ordered interval, "from x to y (in sequence)" be- closed interval bracket marker xo- open interval bracket marker Grouping: ex- in common with uuts- in a mass with, "and" meaning "mixed together", forming a mass animals consists of er,le'matya er,seelat er,lanka'gar er,teresh,kaa living creatures consist of iig,animals iig,plants iig,fungi iig,protozoa to fix plomiik oc,do this oc,do this oc,do this sutarong sholinong setalong the'ran,se le'matya'ib sehlatib sehlatib "Sutar, Sholin, and Setal were killed by a le'matya, a sehlat and a sehlat, respectively." (-se- is a basic past tense I've been using in my proposal to expand the tense system) Now, at this point, I'm thinking we should regard -cee not as a non- logical connective but an abstraction particle. d cee-D D is a member of class/catagory d d faa-D D posesses some quality d ci-X-ic,ze "the statement X" d is-D visual abstraction "D looks like d" d es-D audio abstraction operator "D sound like d" d as-D tactile abstraction operator "D feels like d" d os-D olefactory abstraction operator "D smells like d" d us-D gustitory abstraction operator "D tastes like d" d ^s-D telepathic abstraction operator "D feels like d" There's probably others, but that's all I've come up with so far. w~l'q'n ceespok "Spock is a Vulcan" iw'hi'at is,tcakali "he had a rounded body (his body looks round)" th'laaseso iw'hi ci kroikikaa ic,ze "I advised him, 'stop now'." (-ki- basic present tense from tense proposal). I've been keeping my particles within the morphology for affix particles I've seen so far, that is VC or CV. which gives us an upper limit of 672 particles. Plenty of stuff to work with, I think. That will allow us to keep the words small, agglutinative or not. However, I wonder if Zick's(?) law holds for agglutinative languages? You know, that the guy who discovered that the proportion of words in a language is inverse to the number of letters in the word. So, 50% of the words in a language may be 2 letters, but only 15% of the words would be 3 letter words. I know it holds for most European languages, but I doubt it would apply to agglutinative ones. Rob Z. -------------------------------------------------------- Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx