va'e

According to The Book, the place structure of PA + va'e is:

PA + va'e = x₁ is at scale position (n) on the scale x₂

unless the PA is one of the subjective numbers (du'e, rau or mo'a). In which case the place structure is:

PA + va'e = x₁ is at scale position (n) on the scale x₂ by standard x₃

Discussion

le vi rozgu cu pibiva'e le ka ce'u xunre This rose is very red. This rose is .8 on the scale of redness. [literally]

mi piso'uva'e le ka ce'u krici la'e di'u I barely believe it. I am very little on the scale of beieving that. [literally]

la'e di'u piso'uva'e le ka mi krici ce'u I barely believe it. That is very little on the scale of being believed by me. [literally]

le nu mi krici la'e di'u cu piso'uva'e le ka ce'u fasnu I barely believe it. My believing it is very little on the scale of occurring. [literally]

le du'u mi krici la'e di'u cu piso'uva'e le ka ce'u fatci I barely believe it. That I believe it is very little on the scale of being a fact. [literally]

Is this how it is supposed to be used?

• And Rosta:

  For simpler ways to say "barely", "moderately", "very" and "almost" see JAhA + CAI.

  I don't think you are required to use the pi though (not that it is necessarily wrong). va'e allows the range of the scale to be defined by the speaker.

  • How? The example from the Book suggests that it has to be a 0-1 scale.
    • It says no such thing. The Book does say that numbers for cu'o must be between 0-1 right above it, however; so perhaps you misread it as part of the va'e section? The only va'e example in the book is a granular sofi'upanova'e scale, which (see below), it explicitly says isn't the same as just any old decimal number from 0-1.
      • I said it suggests. It is not the best example because it is used as a tanru modifier. But the scale is "redness", and the value on the scale is 9/10 according to the Lojban and 8/10 in English.
        • I don't think it necessarily suggests that. It certainly doesn't disclaim that either, however; perhaps this is an area where the book needs clarification.
• Jordan DeLong:

  The more interesting usage, and the ones which supersede xoi (in my opinion) are the ones which use subjective PA cmavo like rau, du'e, and mo'a.

le gerku cu jai du'eva'e fenki The dog is too crazy. The dog is too high on the scale of craziness. [literally]

• Would that expand as le gerku cu du'eva'e le ka jai fenki?
  • I don't think so, as it says that nowhere in the book. However in this case it seems to have the same meaning. Also shouldn't that be a ni instead of a ka?
    • Well, the tanru must have some meaning, that one seems the most obvious. I tend to avoid ni because it has too many competing meanings. I would say that the number in front of va'e says to what extent the property x2 is present in x1. That's why pidu'e makes somewhat more sense to me. Is that how we are to understand "scale"?
      • Right; I agree it works in this case, I just don't think you can always make that sort of transformation neccesarily.
        • Do you have a particular example in mind?
• Is du'eva'e better than dukse?
  • Probably not (though I wouldn't say it is worse either). But it's better than "du'exoi" (see xoi).
    • It might be useful to have a list of equivalences or near equivalences, something like:

pidu'e va'e - dukse

pimo'a va'e - toldu'e

pirau va'e - banzu

piso'i va'e - mutce

piso'o va'e - milxe

piso'u va'e - toltce

piro va'e - mulno

• I don't think the pi is necessary on any of these.
  • xorxes:
    • pidu'e is "too much", du'e is "too many". I can understand "too much of a property", but I don't understand "too many" in this context. Too many what? What are the countable things of which there are too many? I could understand du'e fi'u ro as an alternative to pidu'e.
      • .djorden.:
        • du'e fi'u ro is somewhat weird though, as the fi'u is supposed to be used with va'e when there's a granular scale. You don't need to specify the range of the scale, so just du'eva'e works fine. There's nothing wrong with pidu'e (I think it's just like you would expect du'e fi'u ro to be, but it suggests the scale is continuous and not granular), but you can save yourself saying the pi without losing anything.
  • And Rosta:
    • It's true that du'e is glossed as "too many" and pi du'e as "too much", but I suspect this is just a matter of heedlessness and incompetent glossing. Partitive "too much of" is indeed pi du'e, but English "much" is also the counterpart of "many" for uncountables -- both mean "a large amount of". It makes some sense for du'e to mean "too large a quantity of", and no sense for "too much water" to be "pi du'e djacu".
      • xorxes:
        • Hmmm... Consider du'e djacu cu se pinxe lo prenu. To me that means that too many waters were (each) drunk by some (maybe different) person, and not that too much water was drunk by some preson.
      • And Rosta:
        • Okay: I'm inclined to agree with you. It does "make some sense for du'e to mean 'too large a quantity of'", but it's nevertheless not a good idea. But I still think that pi du'e djacu does not mean "too much water".
      • And Rosta:
        • See now a lot of water.
• And Rosta:
  • It's not clear to me how these schemes differentiate between degrees of sort-ofness (position in the no man's land between true and false) and degrees of truth and falsity ("very true", etc: cf. JAhA + CAI).
    • Since you can also define a granular scale in the same thing in front of it, the book allows usages like

      le skami pixra selci cu panoci fi'u remumu va'e blanu = The pixel is 103/255 blue.

    • I suppose that's le skami pixra selci cu 103/255va'e le ka blanu
      • see above about those fenki gerku.
        • Is there a better interpretation?
    • That's still a 0-1 scale, even if granular.
      • It's a 0-255 scale, using only integers, actually. The book says that if you use a form with fi'u for the scale granularly, that you can't consider it to be just a number value. I.e. you can't convert cifi'uxa va'e (3/6) to pafi'ure va'e (1/2), and presumably not to pimu (another 1/2) either.
        • That's clear, but the point is that the actual divisions of the scale are always implicit, within (n). At least that's what the examples suggest. So x2 is the property measured more than the scale.
• All that said, Jordan DeLong would be inclined to assume that any number starting with pi in front of a va'e implies the scale is from 0-1.