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To: lojban
Subject: The Distribution Problem: An Ambiguity?

Folks,
    (I am not really getting active again but I have had a few moments
to read the mail lately and feel like I need to comment on this one.)

The distributive property does not derive from the meanings of the
words being grouped but from the meaning(s) of the connectors.
>From a mathematical perspective, 'and' distributes over compounding.

I think that the problem is that people do not have a pure definition
(or is that purely mathematical/logical definition) of the 'and'
connector.  Since I am not current in my studies and lack my reference
material here, I am not sure what the "meaning of je" is.

I can think of at least two distinct meanings that would yield the
confusion I saw in John's posting:

    1)  parallel assertions, as in "melbi je cmalu ckule" where
        I would  interprete the 'je' as keeping the 'melbi' from
        modifying (compounding with) the 'cmalu' yielding a reference
        to a school that was both pretty and small.

    2)  some equal weighted combining instead of compounding, as in
        "labno je remna dapma" where John tells me that "labno je
        remna" translates into 'werewolf', a thing that is
        simultaniously both a man and a wolf.

I see the problem as being fundamental to the very nature of the
Loglan project: a language whose focus is relations and things are
described by those relations, verses our native languages that
start us with things and extrapolate out to some of those
relationships.

>From a mathematian's perspective: operations on functions are
different from operations on variables because, while we can
sometimes ignore it, functions include variables.  This is
especially a problem when working with functions of multiple
variables (inputs).  Relations are more often than not among
many things (read 'variables' (the situation gets messy when
terminologies collide)).

I suspect that we need to work these ugly little issues out
(issues of the arguments to these functions, or from a more
project orient view (and terminology), issues of the place
structure when combining (with or without 'je')) in all the
gorry detail before distributing (new usage here) the
specifications of our language for people to use.

[< Ok, now throw those rotting vegetables and old cans at me >]

    thank you all,
    Arthur Protin