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Kinds of Negation

From:Jeffrey S. Jones <jeffsjones@...>
Date:Monday, October 13, 2003, 0:15
Hi all,
Lately, I've been thinking about different kinds of negation. I've
looked through the relevant lojban chapter, but I'm wondering how these
could be handled in an artlang. I'm especially looking for something
that's reasonably unambiguous while being reasonably natural.

In the early days of 'Yemls, I specified a prefix {YO} as a "logical
negative" but wasn't careful about what that meant and absentmindedly
used it in 2 different ways:
A) indicating the boolean negation of the entire clause
B) indicating the negative of a set of entities i.e. whatever isn't in
the named set.

Interpretation A
#  'Yemls    --- literal translation    --- free translation
1. dOg: TqB    --- dog(s are) tree(s)    --- (all) dogs are trees
2. a dOg: TqB    --- at-least-1 dog (is a) tree    --- some dogs are
trees
3. dOg: YOTqB    --- [it's false that] dog(s are) tree(s)    --- not all
dogs are trees
4. a dOg: YOTqB    --- [it's false that] at-least-1 dog (is a)
e    --- no dog is a tree

Interpretation B
#  'Yemls    --- literal translation    --- free translation
1. dOg: TqB    --- dog(s are) tree(s)    --- (all) dogs are trees
2. a dOg: TqB    --- at-least-1 dog (is a) tree    --- some dogs are
trees
3. dOg: YOTqB    --- dog(s are) non-tree(s)    --- no dog is a tree
4. a dOg: YOTqB    --- at-least-1 dog (is a) non-tree    --- not all
dogs are trees

Notice that the meaning of 3 and 4 are swapped.

I hope this is readable. Comments? Questions?

Jeff Jones

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>