(From Lognet 94/3)
The Keugru has adopted a number of proposals since the last report in Lognet.
Ordered Lists: The Keugru has decided that lou shall be the descriptor introducing an ordered list, and that luo shall be the corresponding terminator (if needed). Note that these little words are very similar to lau and lua, defined as the descriptor and terminator for itemizing the elements of a set in the Sau La Keugru in Lognet 92/3; the two pairs’ spellings differ only in using a for the unordered list, and o for the ordered one; this should make the two pairs easy for speakers of English or a Romance language to remember.
When should a logli use lau...lua, and when lou...luo? In logical or mathematical contexts, the difference between a set and an ordered list is clear, and those who want to write on such subjects will know what to do. But outside of formal contexts, we can use the set construction to describe a collection of individual items as something we wish to regard as a single (albeit compound) entity.
Lau la Djan, la Djein, la Djordj, la Djosefin, lua ga skuflo plegru.
John, Jane, George, and Josephine make a successful team.
Note that this does not imply that John, Jane, George, or Josephine is a successful individual, just that they are members of a team which plays successfully.
When we list the items in a set, they have to be mentioned in some order because of the linear nature of language; but the order of mention is not significant as far as defining the set is concerned, and naming an element twice is unwise since it doesn’t actually change the membership of the set, and confuses the listener.
In an ordered list, on the other hand, the order of mention of the items is significant—the same elements in a different sequence constitute a different list—and duplicated items are meaningful. An ordered list can be used for an argument whose description is a particular sequence of individual items:
Lou la Arizonas, la Nevadas, la Ai’dyhous, luo ga rutma (sau) la Me’ksikos, (dio) la Ka’nadas, (veu) site merke gunpai.
(First) Arizona, (then) Nevada, (then) Idaho is a route from Mexico to Canada going through only three American states.
Again, the predicate applies to the compound entity, not to the individuals that make it up. Nevada is not a route.
IKOU Now in ICA Lexeme: The Keugru has approved a proposal to include ikou-type words in the ICA Lexeme, rather than the I Lexeme to which they once belonged. Sentences connected with eesheks (ica and kin) form connected sentences, which can in turn be connected with keks (ka...ki and kin) and vice versa. When a word in the I Lexeme comes along, however, it terminates the preceding utterance, including any kekked sentence within it, and begins a new utterance. So causally connected (ikou-type) sentences could not be embedded in kekked sentences until ikou words were moved into the ICA category. This has now been done and appears to introduce no complications. For example,
La Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou Dai vizka la Mai, la Luvr; inoca Dai no norvia.
John fell in love with Mary because he saw her in (against the backdrop of) the Louvre, only if he’s not blind.
This sentence now parses with the causal connection inside the logical one, which means that this causal relation is being asserted to hold only if John is not blind. Replacing the names with variables, the structure is now
([da {clucea de}] ikou [da {vizka <de di>}]) inoca (da [no norvia])
Before this move it would have parsed as
*(da [clucea de]) ikou ([da {vizka <de di>}] inoca [da {no norvia}])
The (odd) claim of the latter, however, can still be made with keks:
La Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou kanoi Dai vizka Mai, la Luvr, ki Dai no norvia.
John fell in love with Mary because, if he saw her in the Louvre, then he’s not blind.
This sentence claims, astonishingly, that John’s falling in love was caused by the rather trivial logical relationship between his seeing something and not being blind. Falling in love must be very easy for John! Or perhaps the speaker is a logician, soi crano, who sees powerful causes in even common logical patterns!
Scope of Quantifiers: The Keugru has adopted a proposal of Dr. Brown’s that the scope of a quantifier marked with goi be specified to be just the “atomic” sentence that follows. An atomic sentence is one which consists of a predicate and its arguments (both of which may be connected forms), but does not contain two (or more) sentences that have been logically connected with eesheks or keks.
La Djan, mrenu (John is a man).
is an atomic sentence, and a simple one.
La Lindberg, pa briga ce famva mrenu go kincle fleti la Nuiork, la Frans, napa sose nirne.
Lindbergh was a brave and famous man who flew alone from New York to France sixty-seven years ago.
is also an atomic sentence. But
La Sokrates, humnu, inoca Sai morcea.
Socrates is human, only if he is mortal.
is a “molecular” sentence, not an atomic one. (Notice that the generic sense of human is now humnu. Ever since the “animal declension” was added in 1991, see SLK 91/3, the 1982 word humni has meant a human infant.)
It was discovered that the Loglan Interactive Parser (LIP) already brackets utterances according to the rule that the scope of goi is the atomic sentence that follows it. That is, if one writes
Raba goi, ba humnu, inoca ba morcea.
LIP will parse it as
([raba goi] [ba humnu]) inoca (ba morcea)
which shows that the ba morcea phrase has been left hanging by itself outside the quantifier construction.
In order to apply a quantifier to the whole of a logically-connected sentence (which is, after all, the most common use of quantification), a kek-construction should be used; and before a kek-construction, the marker goi is no longer needed. Thus, if one does wish to say Everyone who is human is mortal, one should now write
Raba kanoi ba humnu ki ba morcea.
Note that sheks (ca-form connectives) and eks (a-form ones) between predicates make connected predicates but not connected sentences; so
Raba goi, ba humnu, noa morcea.
in which noa is an ek, is analyzed, plausibly enough, as
(Raba goi) (ba [humnu noa morcea])
For all x, x is human only-if mortal.
Me and Mea: The Institute’s Lodtua (“Logic-worker”) has convinced the Keugru that there would be great logical power in more precisely delineating the semantics of the predicate-forming little word me, and introducing a new allolex mea of the ME Lexeme to carry the metaphorical, “-ish”-ish sense of the original me.
After this change, me will define a predicate, written me <argument>, whose extension is the current designatum or designata of <argument>. Thus Da mele mrenu = X is one of the men (I have in mind). Presumably one would use mele preda only after le preda had actually acquired “current designata” by being used. The logical power of this new instrument is suggested by the example of se menei = Seven n’s (seven of the ones that have been referred to by ‘n’), which is now distinguished from senei, which is still a dimensioned number meaning 7 years (unless, of course, nei has been locally redefined to denote some other unit of measure). Distinguishing between *se nei, which is how we once said se menei, and the dimensioned number senei had become a serious morphological problem; and the redefinition of me solved it. If one wanted to say seven ‘n’s—i.e., seven instances of the letter ‘n’—one would say selii nei [seh-lee-EE-nay]. (Notice that stress is penultimate in these word-like phrases.)
Much of the former meaning of me (Loglan 1, p.232) is given to mea: Ta meala Ainctain (/tameAla.AINctain/) = That’s Einsteinian. Note, however, that in sentences in which the new me-constructed preda is a modifier—e.g., Ta mela Ford, tcaro—me may still be used instead of mea because the predicate made with me acquires metaphorical status by virtue of its use as a modifier. In abbreviations of such remarks, that is, when the ME-ed preda becomes either a modificand or the only preda, the explicitly metaphorical allolex mea must be used: thus Ta meala Ford (/tameAla.FORD/) = That’s a Ford. The extra syllable is the small price we pay for this new logical resource. There is the hazard, admittedly, that absentmindedly saying Ta mela Ford will mean something quite different, perhaps That’s Mr. Ford/a Ford company/a member of the Ford family/etc. depending on the current designatum of la Ford.)
Dui and Dua: The “predicate variables” dui and dua refer to a preceding predicate expression—dui, to the last one back, and dua, to some earlier one—and can be used to avoid having to repeat a lengthy phrase. However, when that preceding predicate expression is followed by one or more argument terms, it hasn’t been clear whether the predicate variable represented just the predicate, or the entire <predexp + termset>. The Keugru has determined that, indeed, the dui or dua are to be taken as copies of the predicate plus its following arguments, except that, if the dui/dua is itself followed by arguments, these are taken to replace the arguments in the referenced <termset> from right to left.
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta.
I le stude pa dui lesei papre.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students did so (i.e., carefully wrote the question) on their paper(s).
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta.
I le stude pa dui le retpi lesei papre.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students (carefully wrote) the answer on their papers.
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta.
I le stude pa dui le retpi bei.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students (carefully wrote) the answer on b (the chalk-board).
If the referenced predicate had further unfilled argument-places that one wanted to make explicit in the dui-repetition, one would generally tack them on at the end and mark them with the appropriate case-tags.
Ro pernu fa flemai traci le jmikeosei.
I mi dui sau la Bastn.
Many people will airplane-travel to the meeting; and I will (also), from Boston.
The place-structure of traci is ... travels to ... from ... via ... . The first statement mentioned only the second or “to” argument le jmikeosei; to add the third or “from” argument to the dui statement, we had to use the case-tag sau (the mark of sources/origins/points of departure) in front of la Bastn or it would have replaced the second argument mentioned in the original sentence, and therefore would have meant that I would fly to Boston. Of course, one can avoid case-tagging altogether by actually filling all the argument-places of the referenced predicate (with replacements or with “pro-arguments”) and then appending further arguments. If we had wished to do that in the last example, the second sentence could have been:
I mi dui jei la Bastn
And I will (travel) to j (the meeting) from Boston.
Ize, Izeci, Izege: Ize has now been accepted as a member of the ICA Lexeme, izeci of the ICACI Lexeme, and izege of the ICAGE Lexeme. The -ci and -ge forms play the same role in grouping their operands as simple ci and ge play in predicate strings. (See Loglan 1, secs 3.12, 3.17.) Logli will know that ze used between predicates, as in Le plebarta ga blabi ze nigro, creates a single claim about a “mixed condition”:The playing-board is (a mixture of) black-and-white. By analogy with this “sense-mixing” and “claim-integrating” operation, when ize is used between sentences, it generates a single claim that the two sentences joined by it are jointly true, presumably at the same time and the same place:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
Inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and (at the same time and place) hit her head on the boat. Because of this (joint event) she drowned in the lake.
We can infer from this statement that it was the joint occurrence of the blow to the head and her falling into the water—the “mixture” or joint occurrence of these multiple causes—that caused her to drown. If she had fallen without hitting her head, she would have swum to the dock; and if she hadn’t fallen into the water after hitting her head, she would have regained consciousness in a few minutes.
Notice that ice treats the matter of the drowning quite differently:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ice da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
Inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and she hit her head on the boat. Because of each of these two events she drowned in the lake.
The ice-connected claim is that either cause would have been sufficient to cause the drowning, i.e., that they are independent causes. Notice that we can expand the ice-sentence into a conjunction of two independent claims:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and therefore she drowned in the lake.
and
Da pa bloda le hedto le botsu, inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She hit her head on the boat; and therefore she drowned in the lake.
The ize-sentence, in contrast, because it makes a single claim about a multiple cause, cannot be so expanded.
ICA connections in Loglan group from the left, so the passage above has the structure
[(She fell) ize (she hit)] Inukou (she drowned)
If we wanted to announce the unhappy result at the beginning, but still say that it was caused by the joint occurrence of the contributory events, we would need to use izeci to override the left-grouping:
Da pa flimorcea le vlako, ikou da pa felda le botsu le vlako, izeci da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
(She drowned) ikou [(she fell) izeci (she hit)]
Again we have a single claim about a joint cause. We could also use ikouge to accomplish the same result:
Da pa flimorcea le vlako, ikouge da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
(She drowned) ikouge [(she fell) ize (she hit)]
Reflexive Conversion: Also on the recommendation of our Lodtua, the little words nuo fuo juo have been adopted to designate reflexive conversions of the predicate to which they’re applied. They convert a predicate into a new one with one fewer arguments, where the place of the omitted argument is understood to denote the same person/object/abstraction as the first argument does. Formulaically,
Da nuo preda de di.
means
Da preda da de di.
and similarly
Da fuo preda de di = Da preda de da di;
Da juo preda de di = Da preda de di da.
Examples:
La Djan pa nuo vlaci vi le vlako.
John washed himself in the lake.
La Djein fa fuo takna leDai kicmu.
Jane will talk about herself to her doctor.
Lopo nuo mormao ga po lidzao.
Suicide is a sin.
—Hue Krk Satlis