Re: Once again...

la matius. cusku di'e

> Is addition meaningful with only one argument?

Yes, of course: addition with one argument is "unary plus".

> Surely the addition operator
> requires at least two operands and so if you provide only one, the listener
> will (in good Lojban tradition) fill in the missing operand with the obvious
> value.

We have to distinguish between syntax and semantics here.  Every operator
can be used either as a 2-operand infix operator, thus:

	re su'i re
	2 + 2

or as a su'o-operand prefix operator, thus:

	su'i reboi re[boi]

where the elidable terminator "boi" is required to keep the numbers from
combining into a single number.

Some operators may make no semantic sense with the wrong number of operands,
but + isn't one of them: Common Lisp, e.g. allows an arbitrary number of
operands, including zero (Lojban can't handle zero operands for syntactic
reasons).

> This
> is a moot point though in that, as has been pointed out, MEX expressions
> can't be used with MOI or ROI without the rather clumsy {meli ... me'u}
> bracketing.

This works for MOI, but not for ROI, where there is simply no alternative
to using a number or a lerfu-string -- you could say

	mi ry.roi klama le zarci (to li ry. du li re su'i re toi)
	I r-times go-to the store ( the-number r = the-number 2 + 2 )
	I go to the store r times, where r = 2 + 2.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.