Re: plural
Logical Language Group
>ate each of the apples". Each person ate each of the 5 apples, either an
>impossibility or a disgusting scene :)
>
>On the other hand, {lei prenu cu citka lei plise} means "the people
>ate the apples", without saying what person ate what apple(s).
No. I think you are attaching too much significance to default quantifiers,
which work like the space-time reference - they are applicable only so far
as context demands.
{le prenu cu citka le plise} means "the people ate the apples" with little
more significance than the English has. {lei prenu cu citka lei plise}
also translates exactly the same way, only less - since English does not
distinguish specific mass nouns from specific count nouns, and we decide
which is whhich based on our knowledge of the lexicon. But "the deer ate
the grass" may come close to the neutrality of Lojban since you cannot tell
for sure by the nouns whether they are singular or plural/mass - grass is
usually a mass, but if you had 5 deer and 5 blades of grass and said that,
you would parallel the Lojban situation more or less.
I'm not sure where the default quantifiers are on "lei" at the moment - Cowan
disagreed with me on what we have said before, I think. If "lei" is default
"pisu'o" then the difference between default quanbtifiers affects the
semantics of the usage. But whereas "lei" is explicitly a mass, "le" is not
necessarily explicitly individuals.
I would say that without explicitly identifying the quantifiers, "le prenu
cu tcidu le cukta" does not implicitly imply that each of the people read
everyt single word of each book - it suggests it, but does not mandate it.
(Actually since "le cukta" as a singualr reference is a mass concept, the
implication "every word of" may be inapplicable even if you explicitly stated
the quantifiers.
>> (And do you assume that the "le'e" you 'should'
>> have used is always singular?)
>
>Not singular, but yes individual. That's why I wanted {xe'e}, so that
>I could have the opaque equivalent for masses too.
I think I can accept "le'e" as individual, but am not sure - what is
le'e srasu or le'e gunma for that matter, if not a mass?
I have no idea on the acceptability standard for xe'e - I have not read the
"lo" thread, and Nora is still back in mid-Novemeber and falling further
behind. You and your correspondents just are too prolific for mi (the mass
1st person).
lojbab
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> No. I think you are attaching too much significance to default quantifiers,
> which work like the space-time reference - they are applicable only so far
> as context demands.
specified. The situation with tenses is different, they don't have any default
values. (I think some of them should, but that's a different matter.)
A more valid comparison would be with na/ja'a. If none is given explicitly,
ja'a is the default one.
> I'm not sure where the default quantifiers are on "lei" at the moment - Cowan
> disagreed with me on what we have said before, I think.
horrifying to even consider. :)
With {piroi}, {lei broda} is a singular term (singular meaning that it is
neither universally nor existentially quantified, or rather it is both).
Singular terms are very good because they commute with everything, you
don't have to worry about the order of negation and everything else.
{le broda} is often a singular term too, when it means {le pa broda}.
With another quantifier, {lei broda} is no longer a singular term, and
you have to be very careful with the order in which it appears with
respect to non-singular terms.
The same with {le broda} when it is {le su'ore broda}. The sentence has
different meanings if you change its position with a non-singular term
like {lo broda}.
That's why I think {le [pa] broda} and {lei broda} are going to be used
much more than the others. They are much less trouble.
> I would say that without explicitly identifying the quantifiers, "le prenu
> cu tcidu le cukta" does not implicitly imply that each of the people read
> everyt single word of each book - it suggests it, but does not mandate it.
But it has to mean that each person read every book.
Jorge
Logical Language Group
>> No. I think you are attaching too much significance to default quantifiers,
>> which work like the space-time reference - they are applicable only so far
>> as context demands.
>
>be specified. If any quantifier can be filled in if none is explicitly
>given, the choice of which to fill in should be left to users.
I'm not sure. We have the space-time reference conventions, including "story
time" etc. as defaults for tense given most contexts, but in actual usage
I often say "mi broda" as implying the past tense. The space time reference
convention would not generate the past tense as the default.
All Lojban defaults are to some extent probable values for an ellipsis, at
least in my opinion. I would be willing to be overridden on this by Cowan and/or pc, since I don't think it has been discussed ewxplicitly in design
discussions. I think it has just been my implicit (default? %^) assumption.
And I do think that the ability to use "le" arbitrarily to minimize metaphysi-
cal bias (which is what we label such things as singular/plural and mass/
distributive being mandatory distinctions) is an important precept of the language.
lojbab
Logical Language Group
> I'm not sure. We have the space-time reference conventions, including "story
> time" etc. as defaults for tense given most contexts, but in actual usage
> I often say "mi broda" as implying the past tense. The space time reference
> convention would not generate the past tense as the default.
I don't believe there is any such "STR convention", and the IJ paper was
not intended to say so. The "STR convention", if you want to call it that,
is that when a tense >is< given such as "pu", it is intended to be relative
to the speaker's here-and-now. A tenseless sentence is vague as to tense,
and when you say "mi broda" meaning "mi pu broda", you are quite correct.
In story time, matters are different. There an omitted tense does default
to "bazi" or something like it.
> All Lojban defaults are to some extent probable values for an ellipsis, at
> least in my opinion. I would be willing to be overridden on this by Cowan
> and/or pc, since I don't think it has been discussed explicitly in design
> discussions. I think it has just been my implicit (default? %^) assumption.
I think the default quantifiers are really defaults, not just probable values.
Consider the following excerpt from the draft textbook, pp. 5-30-31 of the
printed version:
# ... For example, take the English sentence "The three people carried the
# bottles." The English is highly ambiguous - did they carry the bottles
# together, or separately (possibly at three different times), or did they
# do it as a mass individual (which might mean that only two of them actually
# did the carrying while the other supervised). The latter might seem
# unlikely in this instance, but a parallel sentence "The baseball team
# hit a home run." uses exactly this interpretation.
#
# One possible translation:
#
# lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
#
# First, we are assuming that there are three particular people that the
# speaker has in mind. (If we were to use "loi ci prenu", we would be making
# a false statement, since there are more than three in the set of all people -
# remember that the quantifier after the descriptor enumerates the set being
# described.) We have particular bottles in mind, but we want it to be clear
# that all of the bottles were carried. Using "lei" as a descriptor for the
# bottles:
#
# lei ci prenu cu bevri lei botpi
#
# would make the sentence true if the people managed to carry only part of the
# bottles, so it is too weak a claim to express the most likely meaning of
# the English.
#
# If the speaker wishes to clearly claim that the three individuals jointly
# participated in carrying the bottles, the quantified mass description
# would be accurate:
#
# piro lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
#
# We use a fraction "piro" as the selecting quantifier, since a mass is always
# treated as a single unit. "ro", or any quantifier larger than one, would
# be incorrect in that position:
#
# *re lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
#
# is grammatical, but nonsense.
#
# If we do not use piro, the Lojban implicitly is interpreted as:
#
# pisu'o lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
#
# which would allow one of the three to perform the act on behalf of both
# [all? - JC] of them. The default quantifiers for all three mass descriptors
# are "pisu'o loi/lei/lai ro (description)".
#
# Using "le ci prenu" rules out the concept of one or two performing the act
# [of - JC] carrying the bottles for all three of them, because the implicit
# quantifier is "ro le ci prenu" (each of them did it). Note that:
#
# ro le ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
#
# requires that each of the people separately carries all of the bottles
# being referred to. The statement does not allow for teamwork.
#
# On the other hand:
#
# ro le ci prenu cu bevri lei botpi
#
# allows each of the people to carry some of the bottles without necessarily
# implying that all of the bottles were carried by any one of the three.
#
# Note that we can more explicitly clarify how many acts of carrying
# occurred [something that And asks about a lot - JC] by specifically
# saying so (using the abstraction operator NU).
#
# piro lei ci prenu cu zukte le pa nu bevri le mu botpi
#
# is completely explicit that "All of the three specific people participated
# in the single act of carrying five particular bottles, with none of them
# necessarily bearing all of the burden."
#
# If the sentence had been the even more ambiguous "Three people carried the
# bottles.", we would have had to consider "lo" as a descriptor for "prenu":
#
# ci lo prenu cu bevri lei botpi
#
# It is not clear in the ENglish whether there are three particular referents
# being described as people (could they really be aliens? [but intelligent
# aliens >are< {prenu} if not {remna} - JC]) or whether the claim describes
# just any three people.
#
# Clearly, in Lojban, the choice of descriptors takes some care, but the
# result is considerable power and flexibility of expression.
Now I find that to be an admirably clear exposition, not only of the specific
point about default quantifiers, but about the default quantifier for "lei",
the distributivity of "le" and multiple "le"s, and even the matter of "any".
I agree with everything in it. If anyone disagrees, let him speak now or
forever hold his peace. :-)
> And I do think that the ability to use "le" arbitrarily to minimize metaphysi-
> cal bias (which is what we label such things as singular/plural and mass/
> distributive being mandatory distinctions) is an important precept of the language.
And I think, on the contrary, that individual/mass/set is one of the true
mandatory distinctions that Lojban makes.
--
John Cowan sharing account <loj...@access.digex.net> for now
e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
Logical Language Group
>A more valid comparison would be with na/ja'a. If none is given explicitly,
>ja'a is the default one.
na go'i .i go'i .i go'i
No I did not contradict myself. "na" carried over as implict to the go'i.
My son and I get into nago'i/ja'ago'i arguments all the time - one little
bit of Lojban he knows well.
On the other hand, i will agree with you that for the rest of the language,
we are not metaphysical neutral withh respect to negation. We ARE by ultimate
assumption, neutral with respect to number and tense, and especially if you
insist that the quantifiers of "le" give an implict number specification
parallelling singular/plural, I am obligated to deny that the default is
absolute.
>> I'm not sure where the default quantifiers are on "lei" at the moment - Cowa
>> disagreed with me on what we have said before, I think.
>--More--
>
>I hope it ends up as {piroi}. The consequences of {pisu'o} are just too
>horrifying to even consider. :)
>
>With {piroi}, {lei broda} is a singular term (singular meaning that it is
>neither universally nor existentially quantified, or rather it is both).
>Singular terms are very good because they commute with everything, you
>don't have to worry about the order of negation and everything else.
>{le broda} is often a singular term too, when it means {le pa broda}.
>
>With another quantifier, {lei broda} is no longer a singular term, and
>you have to be very careful with the order in which it appears with
>respect to non-singular terms.
>
>The same with {le broda} when it is {le su'ore broda}. The sentence has
>different meanings if you change its position with a non-singular term
>like {lo broda}.
>
>That's why I think {le [pa] broda} and {lei broda} are going to be used
>much more than the others. They are much less trouble.
I see your claim, and that to me is a strong reason not to equate "lo" with
a prenex form - it should be locally scoped, I think. To me, as far as is
possible, I want the language to be absolutely symmetrical under SE conversion
unless there are explicit bound variables (or NAKUs) present.
But even ignoring the impliocations for "lo", I do not intuitively see the
problem with fractional quantifiers that I do with "Everybody loves somebody".
Since "loi" is certainly pisu'o, you seem to be arguing that
roda prami [pisu'o] loi prenu and [pisu'o] loi prenu se prami roda are not
the same in meaning. I'm not sure I see this, but again if so, i will protest
that it should not be and that these must have a fixed identical meaning.
I am not happy with your assertion that quantification defaults make all but
1 or 2 of the LE gadri unusable, and will insist strongly that the
quantificational interpretation render these meanings fixed. Cowan said that
the only problem with lo equating to a dapoi parallel was under negation.
YOu are claiming a far greater problem.
lojbab
Logical Language Group
>
> > which work like the space-time reference - they are applicable only so far
> > as context demands.
> Default means that that is the value they have unless otherwise explicitly
> specified. The situation with tenses is different, they don't have any default
> values. (I think some of them should, but that's a different matter.)
>
> ja'a is the default one.
unless overridden, and "le ci nanmu cu bevri le ci mudri" means that each
of the three men carried three logs each.
However, the +specific nature of "le" means that there are at most three
logs operating here: it can't be the case that each man carried a different
group of three logs.
> > I'm not sure where the default quantifiers are on "lei" at the moment -
> > disagreed with me on what we have said before, I think.
>
> horrifying to even consider. :)
>
> With {piroi}, {lei broda} is a singular term (singular meaning that it is
> neither universally nor existentially quantified, or rather it is both).
> Singular terms are very good because they commute with everything, you
> don't have to worry about the order of negation and everything else.
> {le broda} is often a singular term too, when it means {le pa broda}.
>
> With another quantifier, {lei broda} is no longer a singular term, and
> you have to be very careful with the order in which it appears with
> respect to non-singular terms.
inherited from part to whole (with which I agree), an assumed "piro"
makes it impossible to say "mi pinxe lei djacu" unless you drank every
single molecule of the in-mind mass.
> > I would say that without explicitly identifying the quantifiers, "le prenu
> > cu tcidu le cukta" does not implicitly imply that each of the people read
> > everyt single word of each book - it suggests it, but does not mandate it.
>
> Certainly not every single word, unless reading a book implies that.
> But it has to mean that each person read every book.
Mark E. Shoulson
>From: Logical Language Group <lojbab%ACCESS.D...@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>Content-Type: text
>Content-Length: 2871
>>A more valid comparison would be with na/ja'a. If none is given explicitly,
>>ja'a is the default one.
>na go'i .i go'i .i go'i
>No I did not contradict myself. "na" carried over as implict to the go'i.
>My son and I get into nago'i/ja'ago'i arguments all the time - one little
>bit of Lojban he knows well.
Wait, no... I specifically remmeber from years back that "na go'i" in
response to a negative jufra is *not* contradiction. It confused me then,
but I was told that it was important. I'm confused; I'm going to find that
reference... I could swear I recall it from John Cowan or something. Is it
tackled in the negation paper? Will repost when I find what I meant.
~mark
Ah, here's *something*... It's from Nick, in September 1992, in response
to... hey, a post from me, in which I discussed his ckafybarja entry. He
had:
>.i lei bitmu cu se jadni loi carmi bo vrici joi na'e mitsarxe beja'i le tcaci
>.i le re cpare ka'amru poi mitkruca se punji fi le cravro gapru na minrysarxe
>.u'iru'e
>.i na go'i fa loi drata ke bitmu se punji nemu'u lo dembi poi vreta lo kicne
>ku'o jo'u lo slabu tcityta'o nesecu'u lu vi xagrai loi tauzba pe levi
>tcadu li'u
To which I said:
Doesn't the {na go'i} *negate* the previous sentence, so that you're saying
"The climbing axes ... weren't symmetrical. Which is not the case for the
objects hanging on the other walls..." --- i.e. they *were* symmetrical!
To which he replied:
>I might have to look up the negation paper for that. {go'i} doesn't replicate
>all details of the previous jufra: it leaves out attitudinals, for example.
>I don't know if it'd also leave out {na}. Actually, I doubt it, but seem
>to recall that it did in the negation paper.
Veijo corroborated:
> If I remember correctly, {go'i} doesn't replicate the {na}, so
> {na go'i} just repeats the negation.
I don't see anything else on the thread.
What's the officicial word?
~mark
Logical Language Group
> >na go'i .i go'i .i go'i
>
> >No I did not contradict myself. "na" carried over as implicit to the go'i.
> >My son and I get into nago'i/ja'ago'i arguments all the time - one little
> >bit of Lojban he knows well.
la mark. cusku di'e
> Wait, no... I specifically remember from years back that "na go'i" in
> response to a negative jufra is *not* contradiction. It confused me then,
> but I was told that it was important. I'm confused; I'm going to find that
> reference... I could swear I recall it from John Cowan or something. Is it
> tackled in the negation paper? Will repost when I find what I meant.
>
> ~mark
>
>
> Ah, here's *something*... It's from Nick, in September 1992, in response
> to... hey, a post from me, in which I discussed his ckafybarja entry. He
> had:
[text omitted]
> To which I said:
>
> Doesn't the {na go'i} *negate* the previous sentence, so that you're saying
> "The climbing axes ... weren't symmetrical. Which is not the case for the
> objects hanging on the other walls..." --- i.e. they *were* symmetrical!
>
> To which he replied:
>
> >I might have to look up the negation paper for that. {go'i} doesn't replicate
> >all details of the previous jufra: it leaves out attitudinals, for example.
> >I don't know if it'd also leave out {na}. Actually, I doubt it, but seem
> >to recall that it did in the negation paper.
>
> Veijo corroborated:
>
> > If I remember correctly, {go'i} doesn't replicate the {na}, so
> > {na go'i} just repeats the negation.
>
>
> I don't see anything else on the thread.
Well, you are right, but you are drawing the wrong conclusions. Specifically,
Veijo's remark that "{go'i} doesn't replicate the {na}" is incorrect.
A bare "go'i" without any NA ("na" or "ja'a") replicates any "na" in the
referent, but if an explicit NA is present before the "go'i", it overrides
any NA in the referent. Thus:
mi pu klama le zarci mi na pu klama le zarci
I went to the store. I didn't go to the store.
can have the following responses ("OTC" = "on the contrary"):
go'i = "Yes, you did." go'i = "True, you didn't."
na go'i = "No, you didn't." na go'i = "True, you didn't."
ja'a go'i = "Yes, you did." ja'a go'i = "OTC, you did."
Therefore, "na go'i .i go'i .i go'i" and "na go'i .i na go'i .i na go'i"
mean the same thing, because the second and third "go'i"s pick up the
"na" from the first "go'i", which is in turn overriding any "na" in whatever
>its< referent may be. From context, this is presumably a positive claim
of some sort.
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> Consider the following excerpt from the draft textbook, pp. 5-30-31 of the
> printed version:
>
[...]
> # If we do not use piro, the Lojban implicitly is interpreted as:
> #
> # pisu'o lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi
> #
> # which would allow one of the three to perform the act on behalf of both
> # [all? - JC] of them. The default quantifiers for all three mass descriptors
> # are "pisu'o loi/lei/lai ro (description)".
I really don't see what's the benefit of this. What's the advantage of letting
{lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi} mean that only one of the three carried it?
A different thing is to say that for the three of them to carry it, it is
enough that the bottle be in the hands of only one, but somehow they were
acting as a group. Then it would be the whole mass doing the carrying.
> # Clearly, in Lojban, the choice of descriptors takes some care, but the
> # result is considerable power and flexibility of expression.
>
> Now I find that to be an admirably clear exposition, not only of the specific
> point about default quantifiers, but about the default quantifier for "lei",
> the distributivity of "le" and multiple "le"s, and even the matter of "any".
I agree it is very clear, although it doesn't explain why {pisu'o lei} is
preferred to {piro lei} as the default. (I didn't really see anything to do
with the matter of "any".)
> I agree with everything in it. If anyone disagrees, let him speak now or
> forever hold his peace. :-)
I only disagree with the default choice for lei, otherwise I agree with the
explanations.
Jorge
Logical Language Group
>unless overridden, and "le ci nanmu cu bevri le ci mudri" means that each
>of the three men carried three logs each.
>
>However, the +specific nature of "le" means that there are at most three
>logs operating here: it can't be the case that each man carried a different
>group of three logs.
>
Yes but my statement re defaults did was not referring to situations where
you actually supplied onm of the values. I can live with "le tu'o broda"
meaning "su'o le tu'o broda" - I am questioning whether "le broda" without
quantifiers could be pitu'o le pa broda (which is a mass).
lojbab
Logical Language Group
> Yes but my statement re defaults did was not referring to situations where
> you actually supplied onm of the values. I can live with "le tu'o broda"
> meaning "su'o le tu'o broda" - I am questioning whether "le broda" without
> quantifiers could be pitu'o le pa broda (which is a mass).
No, "le tu'o broda" means "ro le tu'o broda"; all of the however-many
so-called brodas you have in mind.
I addressed the "might be a mass" question earlier.
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> The trouble is that under the assumption you want, that properties are not
> inherited from part to whole (with which I agree), an assumed "piro"
> makes it impossible to say "mi pinxe lei djacu" unless you drank every
> single molecule of the in-mind mass.
in mind. Does this imply every single molecule? Does reading a book imply
reading every single word? The "problem" then is with the predicates "drink"
and "read", not with {lei}. The mass properties are not the properties
shared by every component either. A mass of water has the property of
being drank if most of it ends up in your stomach, even if some is spilt
in the process. This has to do with the pragmatics of "drink", not with what
happens to individual molecules of water.
Jorge
Logical Language Group
>{lei ci prenu cu bevri le botpi} mean that only one of the three carried it?
>
>A different thing is to say that for the three of them to carry it, it is
>enough that the bottle be in the hands of only one, but somehow they were
>acting as a group. Then it would be the whole mass doing the carrying.
The baseball team of 9 men scored a run.
lei so prenu [scored a run].
But only one person crossed home plate, and at most 4 players were involved in
getting that person to score the run (barring oddities like sacrifice flies
and the like). So piro would be VERY misleading at the least.
Likewise
ci cinta preja prenu cu klama le mi zdani
.i lei ci prenu cu cinta preja zukte fi lenu lemi zdani cu cinta se gacri
Ah, but unbeknownst to me, only 1 person did the painting while the other 2
held the ladder. piro lei prenu did not spread paint. pisu'o lei prenu did.
When you drink "lei" water, your in-mind mass is NOT that portion of the
molecules that you acytually consimed, but the contents of the glass.
The fact that we know from physics that a few molecules evaporated and did not
enter my gullet does not change what the in-mind mass is. You are trying
to define the in-mind mass as simply that which makes it true if the quantifier
is piro - a most circular definition in my estimation.
lojbab
Logical Language Group
>>>ja'a is the default one.
>
>
>>My son and I get into nago'i/ja'ago'i arguments all the time - one little
>>bit of Lojban he knows well.
>
>--More--
>response to a negative jufra is *not* contradiction. It confused me then,
>but I was told that it was important. I'm confused; I'm going to find that
>reference... I could swear I recall it from John Cowan or something. Is it
>tackled in the negation paper? Will repost when I find what I meant.
>
>~mark
>>na go'i .i go'i .i go'i
na go'i .i na go'i .i na go'i
by a different value, i.e. "ja'a"
lojbab
Mark E. Shoulson
>Date: Wed, 14 Dec 94 22:23:04 est
>To: shou...@shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu
>Subject: Re: negation with go'i
>Mostly, Lojban deals with double negatives as you would expect with
>logic; i.e., not negative is positive. However, negation with go'i is
>different, to make it easier to understand the speaker's intent:
>
>According to the negation paper:
> On Lojban Negation
> $Revision: 2.3 $
> ...
> If you say:
>
> 14.3) na go'i
>
> the question arises as to whether this creates a double negative
> in the sentence by adding a new "na" to the one already there
> (forming a double negative and hence a positive statement), or
> whether the "na" replaces the previous one, leaving the sentence
> unchanged.
>
> It was decided that substitution is the preferable choice, since
> it is then clear whether we intend a positive or a negative
> sentence without performing any manipulation. This is the way
> English usually works, but not all languages work this way.
And yet, Lojbab says:
>Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 01:37:49 -0500
>From: Logical Language Group <lojbab%ACCESS.D...@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>X-To: shou...@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU
>X-cc: loj...@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
So which is correct? "na" is not a sumti in this sentence, I thought. It
would be if it were stated as "naku go'i", in which case perhaps it would
get carried over? But the negation paper says it isn't carried over
normally. Whom should we believe here?
>lojbab
~mark
ucleaar
> The baseball team of 9 men scored a run.
> lei so prenu [scored a run].
>
> But only one person crossed home plate, and at most 4 players were involved in
> getting that person to score the run (barring oddities like sacrifice flies
> and the like). So piro would be VERY misleading at the least.
This is daft. There is one mass - one team - it scored a run, and its
score increases, it edges closer to victory, etc. Which parts of the
mass were more or less involved than which other parts is not terribly
important. If we say "le pa prenu [scored a run]" we don't ask "which
part of the prenu? the arms? the legs? was the pancreas involved? ah
but the *teeth* had nothing to do with it".
Think of a mass as one individual.
---
And
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> The baseball team of 9 men scored a run.
> lei so prenu [scored a run].
>
> But only one person crossed home plate,
Ok, then:
pa le so prenu [crossed home plate].
> and at most 4 players were involved in
> getting that person to score the run (barring oddities like sacrifice flies
> and the like). So piro would be VERY misleading at the least.
So it is false that the whole team scored a run?
I am not very familiar with baseball, but if it was football
(assoc., that is :) then it makes a lot of sense to say that the whole
team scored a goal.
> Likewise
> ci cinta preja prenu cu klama le mi zdani
> .i lei ci prenu cu cinta preja zukte fi lenu lemi zdani cu cinta se gacri
>
> Ah, but unbeknownst to me, only 1 person did the painting while the other 2
> held the ladder. piro lei prenu did not spread paint. pisu'o lei prenu did.
But isn't holding the ladder part of the act? If not, why do you want to refer
to them as a mass? If you still want to do it, you can say {pisu'o lei
prenu ...}. I just think that {piro} is the best as default, not that it should
be used always.
> When you drink "lei" water, your in-mind mass is NOT that portion of the
> molecules that you acytually consimed, but the contents of the glass.
I totally agree. You are not drinking the molecules, you are drinking a
mass of water.
> The fact that we know from physics that a few molecules evaporated and did not
> enter my gullet does not change what the in-mind mass is.
I agree. Molecules of water have nothing to do with this.
> You are trying
> to define the in-mind mass as simply that which makes it true if the
quantifier
> is piro - a most circular definition in my estimation.
No, I am not excluding the evaporated molecules. I am saying that the mass of
water as a whole has the property that I drink it, the complete mass. None
of the molecules has the property that I drink it, because single molecules
are not drunk, liquids are. (And it is unnecessary to say {lei djacu}, since
{le djacu} is already an in-mind quantity of water.)
Jorge
Logical Language Group
>> It was decided that substitution is the preferable choice, since
>> it is then clear whether we intend a positive or a negative
>> sentence without performing any manipulation. This is the way
>> English usually works, but not all languages work this way.
Thus is the existing di'u has a "na" present, saying "na go'i" substitutes
a na for the existing na, and the sentence remains unchanged. To substitute
for a na in a way to render it non-present, you use the positive counterpart
"ja'a". Thus my son and I go back and forth: "na go'i" ".i ja'a go'i" "na go'i"
".i ja'a go'i" which is the accurate reflection of "no", "yes", "no", "yes"
(we don;t always include the ".i" in conversational interchange.)
A major reason why "na" carries over, is that even though it is not a sumti,
if you work a sentence out into its exported prenex form, "na broda" turns
into a sumti "naku" in the prenex.
I suspect that the reference to English is confusing in the bnegation paper,
and it may need rewording.
lojbab
Logical Language Group
> This may seem obvious for a selbri like prenu, but think about "eye", for
> example: "le pa [eye]" meaning "one pair of eyes" is fairly natural, &
> not necessarily misleading (to be sure whether it is, go and ask a
> native speaker of Lojban...).
>
> In fact the problem of what is the unit of broda that we use for purposes
> of counting is one I haven't seen addressed. The English gloss of 'kanla'
> as 'eye' makes me assume "pa lo kanla" is one eye, but is that necessarily
> correct? Could pa lo kanla be a pair of eyes, the eyeage of one person,
> with a single eye being "pimu loi pa lo kanla"? The general point I'm
> making is that how you delimit one individual broda from another is as
> much part of the definition of broda as anything else is; it can't be
> taken for granted as self-evident, or inherent in the extramental
> world.
You are correct in principle, but it seems clear from existing usage that
the body parts are, in fact, counted in the same way as English: two legs
per {remna}, and a fortiori two eyes, so "pa lo kanla [be zo'e]" is one
of somebody's eyes.
Mark E. Shoulson
>Well, you are right, but you are drawing the wrong conclusions. Specifically,
>Veijo's remark that "{go'i} doesn't replicate the {na}" is incorrect.
>A bare "go'i" without any NA ("na" or "ja'a") replicates any "na" in the
>referent, but if an explicit NA is present before the "go'i", it overrides
>any NA in the referent. Thus:
Got it. OK, that makes sense.
>--
>John Cowan sharing account <loj...@access.digex.net> for now
> e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
~mark
ucleaar
> No. I think you are attaching too much significance to default quantifiers,
> which work like the space-time reference - they are applicable only so far
> as context demands.
If this were true (& I bet it isn't) then no default quantifiers should
be specified. If any quantifier can be filled in if none is explicitly
given, the choice of which to fill in should be left to users.
---
And
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> a prenex form - it should be locally scoped, I think.
Do you agree that:
le re prenu cu citka lo plise
Each of the two persons eats an apple.
lo plise cu se citka le re prenu
An apple is eaten by each of the two persons.
mean different things? If they mean the same thing, what exactly do they
mean, and how do you make this compatible with the rest of the language?
> To me, as far as is
> possible, I want the language to be absolutely symmetrical under SE conversion
> unless there are explicit bound variables (or NAKUs) present.
scopes, different from the simple "order of appearance". I doubt very much
that you can find a better rule that is so simple and easy to understand.
> But even ignoring the impliocations for "lo", I do not intuitively see the
> problem with fractional quantifiers that I do with "Everybody loves somebody".
> Since "loi" is certainly pisu'o, you seem to be arguing that
> roda prami [pisu'o] loi prenu and [pisu'o] loi prenu se prami roda are not
> the same in meaning.
The first one says that for each x, there is a fraction of the whole
mass of prenu such that x loves that fraction.
The second one says that there is a fraction of the whole mass of prenu
that is loved by each x.
Two different claims.
> I'm not sure I see this, but again if so, i will protest
> that it should not be and that these must have a fixed identical meaning.
> I am not happy with your assertion that quantification defaults make all but
> 1 or 2 of the LE gadri unusable,
are simultaneously existentially and universally quantified) are much more
easy to manipulate. Of course the other ones are useful, too.
> and will insist strongly that the
> quantificational interpretation render these meanings fixed.
first" or "existential quant comes always first", but this is not how things
have been explained, and I don't think it makes things easier in general.
If you insist that meanings don't change under SE conversion, give the rule
to interpret those sentences.
> Cowan said that
> the only problem with lo equating to a dapoi parallel was under negation.
> YOu are claiming a far greater problem.
to be more careful with non-singular terms than with singular ones.
Jorge
jo...@phyast.pitt.edu
> Well, I don't like your trnaslations to start with - try
> > le re prenu cu citka lo plise
> Each of the two persons eats some apple(s).
>
> > lo plise cu se citka le re prenu
> Some apple(s) are eaten by each of the two persons.
>
> I had always presumed that in the above sentences "some apples" was a fixed
> meaning reference - in the above case, pragmatics dictates that the two people
> eat different apples (Cowan points out proivately though that they could have
> eaten different pieces of the same apple), but that the order did not change
> which apple(s) are eaten by whom.
What you are saying is that the {ro} of {le re prenu} has scope over the
{su'o} of {lo plise}. What is the rule? Universal quantification always
first, unless different order is set in the prenex?
> The "da poi" equivalence changes this, since
> your second sentence means that the two people have to be eating the same
> apples, whereas the first sentence is not specific. So we are forced by
> logical convention to have the conversion mean something that people are
> unlikely to want to say.
Why unlikely? Consider
lo cukta cu se tcidu le ro prenu
Some books were read by all the people.
Why would the meaning "All the people read books" be more likely to be the
one that is wanted?
> And using "loi" or "lei" doesn't help, apparently,
> because they also export to the prenex in some order dependent manner, since
> they are not quantified with "pa" or "ro".
Using {lei} would be very easy with default quantifier {piro}. Then order
becomes irrelevant for it.
(Outside quantification with pa does not give a singular term, in general.
What you need for a singular term is that outside quantification ro = pa)
> Cowan also told me privately in phone con tonight that "le" also is subject
> to thius. Since the inside quantifier is not necessarily one, we must
> presume that distribution COULD take place in any logical analysis, and thus
> an analysy that did not knwo the in-mind specific referent of le broda would
> have to assume that it is plural to avoid a possible logic error - in which
> case order affects the "le" sumti as well. (Cowan will of course correct me
> if I misunderstood this.)
The difference is that to understand what the sentence is telling you, you
have to know what is the referent of {le broda}. Once you know that it is
a single referent, the order is not important.
If you are making a logical analysis then under some changes {ro le broda}
goes to {su'o le broda}. If it happens to be a single broda, then "each of
the single broda" says the same as "at least one of the single broda", and
there is no change in what the sentence says, even if superficially the
quantifier did change.
> So we end up with a situation where probably every sumti value is at least
> potentially order dependent, and for purpose of loguical manipulation must not
> be converted or otherwise rearranged.
Not indiscriminately, that's right. It can be rearranged by making the
appropriate changes in quantification.
> I see this as a major philosophical impact on the langauge design, though
> I might be hard pressed to find examples where it really makes a difference,
> especially when the writing was done by an English or other speaker used to
> the English order conventions. I believe And Rosta and Colin Fine are most
> likely to have used FA in unconventional way that could be rendered incorrect.
> "se conversion" becomes more like a true passive. AFterthought addition of
> sumti becomes probably invalid.
I don't think you'll find many incorrect uses, because overwhelmingly {le broda}
is a singular term, and it makes little difference where you use it. If the
sentence has one or more {lo broda}, and no {le su'ore broda}, order
is irrelevant.
Order only matters when you have universal quantification {le su'ore broda}
mixed with existential quantification {lo broda}. This doesn't happen very
often.
> Cowan mentioned tonight that one option might be some marker that says to
> consider all sumti in the sentence being spoken as prenexing in some
> arbitrary order (say the standard x1/x2/x3) even if they do not appear in
> that order). He suggested an allolex of CU, but I think this is really
> metalinguistic discursive if anything is.
I think that would be really confusing, and I don't see the point of it.
> > I only said that singular terms (ie the only ones that
> >are simultaneously existentially and universally quantified) are much more
> >easy to manipulate. Of course the other ones are useful, too.
>
> But no Lojban sumti has these as the default quantification.
If {piro} was the quantifier of {lei}, it would.
And {le} isn't a singular term in principle, but yes for most practical
purposes.
> I'm not saying this change is impossible - I am just saying that it is a
> major change from the way >I< at least thought the language would work.
I don't understand why you say it's a change. The scopes of ro and su'o
are either in the order they appear (which is what I always understood) or
there is some other rule. If there is some other rule, what is it?
Jorge