14.12. Logical connection within tanru

As noted at the beginning of Section 14.9 , there is no logical connective in Lojban that joins selbri and nothing but selbri. However, it is possible to have logical connectives within a selbri, forming a kind of tanru that involves a logical connection. Consider the simple tanru blanu zdani , blue house. Now anything that is a blue ball, in the most ordinary understanding of the phrase at least, is both blue and a ball. And indeed, instead of blanu bolci , Lojbanists can say blanu je bolci , using a jek connective within the tanru. (We saw jeks used in Section 14.11 also, but there they were always prefixed by pe'e ; in this section they are used alone.) Here is a pair of examples:

Example 14.78. 

ti blanu zdani
This is-a-blue-type-of house.

Example 14.79. 

ti blanu je zdani
This is-blue and is-a-house.

But of course Example 14.78 and Example 14.79 are not necessarily equivalent in meaning! It is the most elementary point about Lojban tanru that Example 14.78 might just as well mean

Example 14.80. 

This is a house for blue inhabitants.


and Example 14.79 certainly is not equivalent in meaning to Example 14.80.

A full explanation of logical connection within tanru belongs rather to a discussion of selbri structure than to logical connectives in general. Why? Because although Example 14.79 happens to mean the same as

Example 14.81. 

ti blanu gi'e zdani


and therefore as

Example 14.82. 

ti blanu .ije ti zdani


the rule of expansion into separate bridi simply does not always work for tanru connection. Supposing Alice to be a person who lives in blue houses, then

Example 14.83. 

la .alis. cu blanu je zdani prenu
That-named Alice is-a-( blue and house ) type-of-person.

would be true, because tanru grouping with a jek has higher precedence than unmarked tanru grouping, but:

Example 14.84. 

la .alis. cu blanu prenu
That-named Alice is-a blue person,
.ije la .alis. cu zdani prenu
and that-named Alice is-a house person.

is probably false, because the blueness is associated with the house, not with Alice, even leaving aside the question of what it means to say Alice is a blue person. (Perhaps she belongs to the Blue team, or is wearing blue clothes.) The semantic ambiguity of tanru make such logical manipulations impossible.

It suffices to note here, then, a few purely grammatical points about tanru logical connection. bo may be appended to jeks as to eks, with the same rules:

Example 14.85. 

la .teris. cu ricfu je nakni jabo fetsi
That-named Terry is-rich and (male or female).

The components of tanru may be grouped with ke both before and after a logical connective:

Example 14.86. 

la .teris. cu [ke] ricfu ja pindi [ke'e]
That-named Terry ( is-rich or is-poor )
je ke nakni ja fetsi [ke'e]
and ( male or female ).

where the first keke'e pair may be omitted altogether by the rule of left-grouping, but is optionally permitted. In any case, the last instance of ke'e may be elided.

The syntax of jeks is:

[na] [se] JA [nai]

parallel to eks and giheks.

Forethought tanru connection does not use geks, but uses guheks instead. Guheks have exactly the same form as geks:

[se] GUhA [nai]

Using guheks in tanru connection (rather than geks) resolves what would otherwise be an unacceptable ambiguity between bridi-tail and tanru connection:

Example 14.87. 

la .alis. gu'e ricfu gi fetsi
That-named Alice is-both rich and female.

Note that giks are used with guheks in exactly the same way they are used with geks. Like jeks, guheks bind more closely than unmarked tanru grouping does:

Example 14.88. 

la .alis. gu'e blanu gi zdani prenu
That-named Alice is-a-(both blue and a-house) type-of-person.

is the forethought version of Example 14.83.

A word of caution about the use of logically connected tanru within descriptions. English-based intuition can lead the speaker astray. In correctly reducing

Example 14.89. 

mi viska pa mlatu .ije mi viska pa gerku
I see a cat, and I see a dog.

to

Example 14.90. 

mi viska pa mlatu .e pa gerku
I see a cat and a dog.

there is a great temptation to reduce further to:

Example 14.91. 

mi viska pa mlatu je gerku
I see a cat and dog.

But Example 14.91 means that you see one thing which is both a cat and a dog simultaneously! A mlatu je gerku is a catdog, a presumably non-existent creature who is both a mlatu and a gerku.