roses and tulips - Lojban/English

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>]

Peter Schuerman asks:

    How would one express "that rose is fuzzily 1/pi more pleasant
    than yonder tulip"?

Adapting the example for comparatives shown in the Cowan's abstraction
paper, example 4.7, I would write:

    .i le vi rozgu cu zmadu le va tujli le jei melbi kei li fi'upai
    This rose is more than that tulip in the truth abstraction of beauty
    by amount 1/pi

Also, suppose someone asks:

    .i xu go'i                  Is the preceding utterance true?

(The pro-bridi {go'i} repeats the preceding bridi.)

I might respond with any one of the following:

    .i jo'a go'i                Yes, there is nothing metalinguistically wrong.

    .i ju'o go'i                Certainly.

    .i ju'o sai go'i            Almost certainly.

    .i ju'o ru'e go'i           Somewhat certainly.

    .i ju'o xipibi go'i         0.8 certainty.

    .i la'a xipize go'i         0.7 probabillty.

    .i je'u ru'e go'i           Somewhat truly.

I might also say:

    .i  li rau go'i             The amount is enough.
or
    .i  li mo'a go'i            The amount is insufficient.

(In this use of {go'i} the {li} expression in the preceding utterance
is replaced.)

Or I might be more complex;

    .i  li pi xa poi ci'u le li'i me jetnu  go'i

                                The amount is 0.6 on the scale of my
                                experience of truth.

    .i  li pi vo poi ci'u le li'i me dirba  go'i

                                The amount is 0.4 on the scale of my
                                experience of emotional valuation.

This last is short for:

    .i le vi rozgu cu zmadu le va tujli le jei melbi kei
    li pi vo poi ci'u le li'i me dirba

    This rose is more than that tulip in the truth abstraction of beauty
    by amount 0.4 on the scale of my experience of emotional valuation.

This latter utterance OK grammatically, according to the Lojban parser
version 2;5;33 --- and as far as I can understand it works as I want:
the {poi} links the {ci'u} to the {li}, so it is a `number by my scale',
not a `truth abstraction by my scale'.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@rattlesnake.com
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725