Re: Kinds of Negation

On Sun, Oct 12, 2003 at 08:04:51PM -0400, Jeffrey S. Jones wrote:
> 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.
I don't know how natural it is, but Ebisedian has 3 types of negatives
(explained below).

> 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.
Ebisedian uses the nullar number for (B), and a negation particle for (A).
The nullar number simply indicates the absence of a noun; while the
negation particles negate the sentence.

Examples:
1) mw'p3z3d3 juli'r.    "There is no man in the house."
   man(nul)  house(loc)

2) my'e p33'z3d3 juli'r. "It is not true that the man is in the house. "
   NEG  man(cvy) house(loc)

There is a third type of "negative" which indicates opposition, rather
than absence. It's not strictly on par with the above two negatives, but
Ebisedian does distinguish between "X is not true" and "not-X is true".
For example, if somebody claimed "all dogs are white", you could respond
in one of the following ways:
- _ji'e_ (yes, all dogs are white)
- _my'e_ (no, some dogs aren't white---negation of universal quantifier)
- _khe'e_ (no, no dogs are white---universal quantifier on negation of the
  statement)


> Interpretation A
> #  'Yemls    --- literal translation    --- free translation
> 1. dOg: TqB    --- dog(s are) tree(s)    --- (all) dogs are trees
Hmm, it seems that you would want to explicitly state the quantifier?
E.g., a word for "all".

> 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
Hmm, 3 and 4 seem counterintuitive to me. I'd expect them to be the other
way round.

> 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
This seems better.


T

--
Let's not fight disease by killing the patient. -- Sean 'Shaleh' Perry

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