John Woldemar Cowan

“ But what exactly does “na'e” negate? Does the negation include only the gismu “klama”, which is the entire selbri in this case, or does it include the “le zarci” as well? In Lojban, the answer is unambiguously “only the gismu”. The cmavo “na'e” always applies only to what follows it. ”

“ I am fond of one who isn’t the current king of France. The claim of Example 2.10 could apply to anyone except a person who is fond of no one at all, since the relation within the description is false for everyone. You cannot readily express these situations in colloquial English.
Negation with “na” applies to an entire bridi, and not to just part of a selbri. Therefore, you won’t likely have reason to put “na” inside a tanru. ”

“ It is thus invalid to logically require that if something is blue, that it is colored, or if it is not-blue, then it is some other color. In Lojban, “blanu” (“blue”) is not explicitly defined as a “skari” (“color”) . Similarly, it is not implicit that the opposite of “good” is “bad”.
This mutual independence of gismu is only an ideal. Pragmatically, people will categorize things based on their world-views. ”

“ In English, we have a clear way of distinguishing scalar negation from predicate negation that can be used in many situations. We can use the partial word “non-” as a prefix. But this is not always considered good usage, even though it would render many statements much clearer. ”

“ The cmavo “na'e” is not the only member of selma'o NAhE. If we want to express a scalar negation which is a polar opposite, we use the cmavo “to'e”, which is grammatically equivalent to “na'e”:
5.8) le stizu cu to'e xunre be ci'u loka skari The chair is a (opposite-of red) on-scale a-property-of color-ness. Likewise, the midpoint of a scale can be expressed with the cmavo “no'e”, also grammatically equivalent to “na'e”. Here are some parallel examples of “na'e”, “no'e”, and “to'e”:
5.9) ta melbi That is-beautiful. 5.10) ta na'e melbi That is-non-beautiful. That is other than beautiful. ”

“ Correspondingly, some selbri have no obvious “to'e” — what is the opposite of a dog? — while others have more than one, and need “ci'u” to specify which opposite is meant.
sumpti negation There are two ways of negating sumti in Lojban. We have the choice of quantifying the sumti with zero, or of applying the sumti-negator “na'ebo” before the sumti. It turns out that a zero quantification serves for contradictory negation. As the cmavo we use implies, “na'ebo” forms a scalar negation. ”

“ In fact, the grammar currently does not allow you to do so (except in a lujvo and in elaborate constructs involving GUhA, the forethought connector for selbri) . Any situation where you might want to do so can be expressed in a less-compressed non-tanru form. This grammatical restriction helps ensure that bridi negation is kept separate from other forms of negation.
The grammar of “na” allows multiple adjacent negations, which cancel out, as in normal logic:
2.11) ti na na barda prenu co melbi mi This [false] [false] is-a-big person that is (beautiful to me) . ”

“ Most of the COI cmavo are used in what are commonly called protocol situations. These protocols are used, for example, in radio conversations, which often take place in a noisy environment. The negatives of protocol words tend to convey diametrically opposite communications situations (as might be expected) . Therefore, only one protocol vocative is dependent on “nai”: negative acknowledgement, which is “je'enai” (“I didn’t get that”) .
Unlike the attitudinal indicators, which tend to be unimportant in noisy situations, the protocol vocatives become more important. ”

“ A “nai” attached to a non-logical connective (of selma'o JOI or BIhI) is a scalar negation, and says that the bridi is false under the specified mixture, but that another connective is applicable. Non-logical connectives are discussed in Chapter 14.
Truth questions One application of negation is in answer to truth questions (those which expect the answers “Yes” or “No”) . The truth question cmavo “xu” is in selma'o UI; placed at the beginning of a sentence, it asks whether the sentence as a whole is true or false.
8.1) xu la djan. pu klama la paris. ”

“ Example 3.10 and Example 3.11 have the advantage that, while they contain a negative indication, they are in fact positive assertions. They say what is true by excluding the false; they do not say what is false. ”