Re: Contradictory negation

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 11:52:43AM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> In Loglan, there is a particle "no" which when placed at the beginning of
> a sentence, expresses the falsity of the (rest of the) sentence.
Interesting. This seems to be identical to Ebisedian's _my'e_ ["my?&]
which roughly means "it is not the case that ...". It is usually placed at
the beginning of the sentence, and negates the meaning of the entire
sentence.

[snip]
> Lojban has a similar particle, with slightly different morphology ("na")
> and very different syntax.  It is canonically placed before the verb,
> but still has the effect of negating the entire sentence.
Interesting. The Ebisedian _my'e_ could conceivably be used in this
manner, since it always, unambiguously, negates the entire sentence.
The free word order would technically permit this as well.

The only barrier is that by convention, particles like _my'e_ almost
exclusively appears at the front of a sentence. It only rarely appears
anywhere else.


[snip]
>         ro gerku na blabi
>         all dog [false] white
>
> does not mean "All dogs are not white" but rather "It is false that all dogs
> are white", i.e. "Not all dogs are white", i.e. "Some dogs are not white".
In Ebisedian, if the first meaning is desired, one would have to use the
noun "white" in its nullar form. The nullar number in Ebisedian indicates
absence, and also sometimes indicates negation. For example:
1)      Pa~o 3m3ng0'         my'e K33'.
        all  horse(plur,cvy) not  white(cvy)
        "It is not the case that all horses are white."

2)      Pa~o 3m3ng0'         my'K3.
        all  horse(plur,cvy) white(nul,cvy)
        "All horses are non-white." (Literally, all horses show no white.)

[snip]
> Are there any natlangs which have negation particles that work like Lojban's?
[snip]

Don't know about natlangs. Ebisedian sure is close. :-)


T

--
I am a consultant. My job is to make your job redundant. -- Mr Tom