Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question
Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
>{gerku} refers to dogs in the usual way, {gunma} and {remei} refer
>to masses in the usual way; the usual way to refer to dogs is as wholes,
>the
>usual way to refer to masses is as parts -- that is what the quantifiers on
>{lei} say.
I think that's a big confusion. For starters {gunma} and {remei}
refer to relationships, {le remei} refers to things that go in the
x1 of {remei}. If {le remei} refers to only part of a mass I could
say {mi remei} on the grounds that I am part of a pair. That doesn't
make sense. The quantifier on {lei} cannot get suffused into
the relationship {remei}. One thing has nothing to do with the
other.
>I don't suppose the Book does say this explicitly -- it is remarkably poor
>on
>semantics and ontology. But, on the assumption (which I am obligated to
>make
>if I am to learn **Lojban**, rather than a kindred -- or not so --
>language)
>that the quantifiers on {lei} are correct, that has to be the way it works:
>{le remei} is, in context, exactly equivalent to {lei re danlu} and subject
>to same interpretation -- if not quite exactly the same grammar.
It is not exactly equivalent. {lei re danlu} refers to the two
animals. {le remei} could refer to each of any number of pairs.
If there were two cats and two dogs, for example, {le remei} could
be "each of the two pairs". So even if you accept the inconvenient
implicit quantifier proposed by the Book for {lei}, you don't have
to create a strange interpretation for {le remei}.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
>{le remei} refers to a mass based on a two-membered set.
Whereas for me it refers to a two-membered mass. If we can't
get past this stumbling block, we'll continue talking past
each other.
>I suspect this is English again, {lei bolci cu crino} is true -- at least
>this has been said authoritatively several times over the last 47 years --
>if
>even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot).
Yes, unfortunately it has been said authoritatively too many
times. I never saw actual usage take advantage of this "feature"
though.
>However, this is still
>off my point, which is in the this case case, that even when there are a
>hundred and one balls, the mass with just one of those balls as its only
>member can still be lei bolci.
In official Lojban, yes, {[pisu'o] lei bolci} is some part of
the mass of balls, so it can refer to the one ball.
But even in official Lojban I have never before seen the claim
that {le 101mei} could refer to the mass of one ball. It seems
outrageous and it would seem to make {mei} fairly useless.
>Oh, surely not every one sui generis. At worst they divide into a number
>of
>cases that get the same treatment -- and even a large number of such types
>(but I doubt it).
Well, I guess it is possible to set up a classification scheme,
but in the end you need to examine the particular context before
deciding in which class a given property falls. It's not something
you could put in a dictionary.
>The question about age in a mass raises a nasty question, that of
>identifying
>a mass (or distinguishing one mass from another, individuating a mass).
>Depending on how that is done (and there are a number of ways of doing it).
>We can a variety of answers.
Exactly. And the same works to some extent for every property,
some being of course more clear cut than others.
>We have already
>established that the set of exactly the members of the mass need not be the
>set that is relevant for the mass (or at least you seem to have agreed with
>me on the cases that I take to have dealt with that).
I hope I have not agreed with that, since I think that the set of
exactly the members is the relevant one, if we need to talk
of any set at all. And the place structure I had proposed for
{mei}, which you said you liked, had the mass of cardinality n
in x1, and a supermass (of indeterminate cardinality) in x2.
>Why we would want to
>say that the mass is also a mass of other sets is simply to make {lei gerku
>cu gunma le'i gerku} true -- as it intuitively is.
{le'i gerku} is the set of dogs I have in mind, and {piro lei gerku}
is the mass of the very same dogs. {pisu'o lei gerku} is some part
of that mass. {lei gerku cu gunma le'i gerku} is true with any of
the two quantifiers for {lei}. Since it is true with {piro} it
has perforce to be true with {pisu'o}. I don't see that any of this
requires that the mass have different members to those of the set.
><{lei gerku na gunma le'i gerku} means (with implicit {pisu'o})
>That it is false that there is some part of the mass of dogs
>which corresponds to the set of dogs. I can't see how
>that could be true with any interpretation of {lei}.>
>
>Well, that is not quite what it says: It says that some mass of dogs, some
>submass of the mass of all dogs, is not a mass from the set of dogs.
Nope. {na} has scope over the whole bridi. Your version would be
the one with {naku}.
>I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".>
>
>As usual -- the question Lojban doesn't ask -- enough for what? Can you
>come
>up with something other than "to declare that the whole mass is tired"?
No, I certainly can't give you a percentage. But there is no magic
formula that will tell you how many members have to be tired for the
group to be considered to be tired, that goes with the context.
Even for one person, there is no rule that will tell you when they
are tired, that also depends on the context.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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In a message dated 7/4/2002 8:30:18 PM Central Daylight Time, jjlla...@hotmail.com writes:
<No. There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.
There is no reason why the implicit {pisu'o} of {lei} has to be
transferred to {le remei}.>
There is no reason why it can't be; but there is also no reason why it has to be, which is the point here. There is no reason why {pisu'o} can't be piro either, but it doesn't have to be. So it is probably safest to go with the minimum.
<>That mass is tired if only the dog (or only
>the cat) is, just as the mass chases the potman if only the dog does.
That's your interpretation. The way I see it, the properties of
tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
that of the mass.
So, how do they work? I see postman-chasing as directly analogous to piano-toting, which can be done by three guys together even if only two of them ever lay hands on the piano (or housepainting if you like that better). And I see being tired as being like being green, true of a mass if true of one element. (remember -- as I think you occasionally do not) that in Lojban, {lei} behaves in this respect exactly like {loi}.
<>Masses
>aren't as useless as sets, but they need to be treated carefully.
It would be very hard to do away with masses, they are very
useful. But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
widespread in Lojban lore.>
That masses have all the properties of any member may be (but I don't think really is) widespread in Lojban lore, but I certainly don't hold it (and have spoken against it within the last few days). It is, however, the default position when nothing else clearly has a role -- logical sum when neither numerical nor participatory applies. And it is hard to see how either numerical or participatory applies in the case of tiredness (a little clearer in the case of postman-chasing). Of course, there are almost certainly other kinds of exceptions and they should be counted in as soon as explained, but for now I don't see an explanation that works for tiredness aside from saying that it is sui generis -- which is not very convincing. I suspect this is your quite correct intuition about English and Spanish that you are trying to import into Lojban.
<>Is {ko'a joi ko'e gunma ko'a ce ko'e ce ko'i} true or
>not?
We'd have to agree first on the place structure of {gunma} for
me to answer something that is meaningful to you.>
gunma = 1 is a mass/team/aggregate[I'm not at all sure about "aggregate"] of members of the set 2 (this derived partly from the gi'ste, partly from the definition of {lo/e/ai} )
<Assuming {ko'a} and {ko'e} refer to individuals, then
{ko'a joi ko'e} refers to a mass of two individuals, and
{ko'a broda} being true does not imply that {ko'a joi ko'e broda}.>
True in general, but not the issue here, which is whether a mass of a subset is also a mass of the set as a whole.
<>If true then your remark backs up my point about masses being only
>partial. If false then, then {loi gerku cu gunma lo'i gerku} is also
>false,
>against a number of basic sematic principles.
I don't see how you conclude any of this. Taking {gunma} as the
relationship between a mass and a set with the same members, then
{piro loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true, and therefore
{pisu'o loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true as well.
{piro loi broda cu brode} always entails {pisu'o loi broda cu brode},
as long as {piro loi broda} is not the empty mass!>
Ignoratio elenchi -- and petitio principi. This is not the question at issue and it presupposes one answer in the discussion -- namely that the members of the set and of the mass are the same. Also, {piro loi broda} can't refer to an empty mass, since it always entails {pisu'o loi broda} -- but we do genuinely disagree about that (or, rather, you think it should be otherwise and I say it is this way -- and don't think it even should be otherwise).
<>{gunma} means -- like most
>predicates -- "is A mass" not "The complete mass" from some set.
Assuming it does (even though that's not what the gi'uste says)
{le gunma} is still used to refer to one (or more) of those masses
from some set, not to parts of those masses from some set. Once
you identify what {le gunma} is, it is that mass, not just any part
of that mass.>
Hey, I have my revisionist streaks, too -- especially in the case of clear inconsistencies, as here, where a submass would not be a mass at all. But the point again is whether this mass from less than all the members of a set is a mass from that set. If it is, {le remei} can be just the dog (or the mass that consists of just the dog, for which the inference from member to mass seems to go through unscathed). {remei} only identifies the size of the set, not of the mass. On the other hand, if it is not, then lei gerku na gunma le'i gerku, even when dogs are meant all around.
<>{remei}
>notice talks about the size of the set underlying, not about completeness
>either.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Hopefully {lo sovda 12mei} does
not claim that the set of all eggs has only 12 members! {lo remei}
is "a dozen", not some part of an underlying set of 12.>
No one -- so far as I can tell -- thinks that {lo sovda paremei} means that there are only twelve eggs altogether in the world forever, etc. I am less sure that it means "a dozen eggs", since I don't generally take that as a mass (except in a recipe: "add a dozen eggs" and maybe a few other places). Generally, I think "a dozen eggs" is just {pare sovda}, since I intend then to be used one by one. Or maybe {le sovda se paremei}.
<la greg cusku di'e
>I can't now work out what {le remei} actually means. How would it differ
>from {lei remei}?
le remei = each of the pairs
lei remei = all the pairs together>
I disagree with the latter, of course, and would say "some of the pairs together." Lojban again, not common sense.
<>It is, however likely that {lu'o le gerku .e le mlatu cu tatpi} doesn't
>mean
>that all of them are tired. Otherwise an officer telling his superior "lei
>nanmu cu tatpi" would not be telling the truth.
For {lei nanmu cu tatpi} to be true, it is not necessary that
{ro le nanmu cu tatpi} be true. However, {pa le nanmu cu tatpi}
does not entail {lei nanmu cu tatpi}. If the officer tells
his superior {lei nanmu cu tatpi} just because one of them
is, he would not be telling the truth. The group as a whole
should be tired.>
I'm not sure {lu'o le gerku e le mlatu cu tatpi} gets what is wanted here: the scope of {lu'o} ought to run out at the end of {gerku}. Oddly, it does not, meaning that -- contrary to intuitions -- {le gerku e le mlatu} are no longer logically connected, because of the {lu'o}, but now amount to {joi} without the {lu'o}. OK, it is correct -- though {joi} is safer, I think. Admittedly, this way -- if we could keep the logic of {e} -- would make my case better, but be just too weird for words.
You still us an explanation of "the group as a whole should be tired" that is different from both "one member of the group is tired" and "all the members of the group are tired." "Some plurality of the group is tired"? What? But notice that, absent that explanation, the default rule holds, and that is the same for {lei} as for {loi}.
<>I think this is one place where the book is right in the wrong way. The
>implicit quantifiers on lei don't work as they should. A mass, considered
>as
>a mass, is either tired or isn't (otherwise masses are as useful as sets).
>We can't have a situation where {lei nanmu cu tatpi .ije naku lei nanmu cu
>tatpi} is true.
Right. At least not any more than {mi ge tatpi ginai tatpi}.>
Well, the case to watch for is {lei nanmu cu tatpi ije lei nanmu cu naku tatpi}. The others work because they are logical contradictions, not because they say anything useful about masses (or anything else).
<The prosumti we want here is necessarily
vague, and {le remei} (or {le romoi}, or whatever number works best
in context) I think is the best we have. I used this method a few
times in the Alice translation.>
Maybe, but they don't work very well at all. In *Lojban*.
<>ciksi). It makes no sense to be able to say {loi cmacu cu crinu} because I
>decided that dying my own hair green wasn't enough.
But notice that {pisu'o} is the right quantifier for {loi},
just like {su'o} is for {lo}. {loi smacu cu crino}
says that some mice are green, about the same as {lo smacu cu crino},
since there is not much difference here in being green together
or individually.>
Thanks for emphasizing this difference; it does get lost occasionally in these discussions.
Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
>But, if you want to insist (as
>Jordon seems to) that {le remei} means mass of the cat and the dog, then
>you
>are stuck with the rest of it.
No. There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.
There is no reason why the implicit {pisu'o} of {lei} has to be
transferred to {le remei}.
>That mass is tired if only the dog (or only
>the cat) is, just as the mass chases the potman if only the dog does.
That's your interpretation. The way I see it, the properties of
tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
that of the mass.
>Masses
>aren't as useless as sets, but they need to be treated carefully.
It would be very hard to do away with masses, they are very
useful. But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
widespread in Lojban lore.
>Is {ko'a joi ko'e gunma ko'a ce ko'e ce ko'i} true or
>not?
We'd have to agree first on the place structure of {gunma} for
me to answer something that is meaningful to you.
Assuming {ko'a} and {ko'e} refer to individuals, then
{ko'a joi ko'e} refers to a mass of two individuals, and
{ko'a broda} being true does not imply that {ko'a joi ko'e broda}.
>If true then your remark backs up my point about masses being only
>partial. If false then, then {loi gerku cu gunma lo'i gerku} is also
>false,
>against a number of basic sematic principles.
I don't see how you conclude any of this. Taking {gunma} as the
relationship between a mass and a set with the same members, then
{piro loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true, and therefore
{pisu'o loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true as well.
{piro loi broda cu brode} always entails {pisu'o loi broda cu brode},
as long as {piro loi broda} is not the empty mass!
>{gunma} means -- like most
>predicates -- "is A mass" not "The complete mass" from some set.
Assuming it does (even though that's not what the gi'uste says)
{le gunma} is still used to refer to one (or more) of those masses
from some set, not to parts of those masses from some set. Once
you identify what {le gunma} is, it is that mass, not just any part
of that mass.
>{remei}
>notice talks about the size of the set underlying, not about completeness
>either.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Hopefully {lo sovda 12mei} does
not claim that the set of all eggs has only 12 members! {lo remei}
is "a dozen", not some part of an underlying set of 12.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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G. Dyke
for an experimental cmavo (compared with other experimental cmavo which
definately don't _need_ to exist.
For that apples and oranges case a few weeks ago: I've had wanted to say
something of the type:
le ni [apples] (kei) le ni [oranges] (kei) [both of which] no'u su'o pa cu
sumji li 12
we need a cmavo which will group sumti together in much le same way as vu'o
groups logically connected sumti together.
we could then have:
le gerku le mlatu xu'o goi ko'a cu jersi...
damn! that would break the grammar completely. Or maybe a pro-sumti which
refers to
le go'i .e le se go'i .e le te go'i etc.
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: <py...@aol.com>
To: <loj...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 11:29 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question
> In a message dated 7/3/2002 4:10:29 PM Central Daylight Time,
> lojba...@lojban.org writes:
>
>
> > I'm fine with context resolving those particular issues. I don't
> > think _all_ the pro-sumti approaches can be realistically unambiguous
> > (long live ra and ru). "le remei" seems like the best solution
> > mentioned. The unbounded ko'a approach seems semi-dangerous to me,
> > as it could damage the intended unambiguity of selma'o ko'a things.
> > I'd rather munge "ru" than ko'a stuff (and that seems unneccesary
> > with just "le remei").
> >
>
> Hell, they can't even be theoretically unambiguous except for a few
special
> cases. The issue here is whether they can reasonably be expected to get
the
> hearer to the right thing(s in this case). In this case we do not have
any
> dyads mentioned so far (in the little context we have) nor do we have two
> individuals explicitly mentioned -- merely some number of dogs and some
> number of cats. Can the hearer -- will the hearer likely -- put all of
this
> together to work out that the number is 1 in each case and that we are now
> speaking of the two referents together? How can we help him? Of course,
> later context may do it-- "the dog more than the cat," say, added on to
the
> problem sentence:{ le gerku cu zmadu le mlatu le du'u ce'u tatpi}. But
can
> we do something at the pronoun itself? I am not clear what was the matter
> with {ri e ra}, which is almost unambiguous -- as close as we are likely
to
> get, anyhow -- and as short as most suggestions.
Jordan DeLong
> On {remei} as a solution, note also that {remei} refers to a mass and thus
> would be true if only one of the pair had the property in question. The
> result wanted would require something like {piro le remei cu tatpi}.
There's no problem with context resolving the particular things you
mentioned in the other email by context; however the above is
incorrect.
And, note the "le remei" is _not_ a mass. It's a description of
something that could go in x1 of remei, treated individually. The
place structure of remei is
x1 is a set with the pair of members x2
so we're strictly more interested in x2. But because it's a description
and because the set contains those members, "le remei" gets ya the
same result.
--
Jordan DeLong
frac...@allusion.net
py...@aol.com
Jorge Llambias
la djorden cusku di'e
>Umm; I don't think it's important how many dogs or mlatu there was. Using
>the remei to describe instead of reusing a previous description should be
>enough to show that we're talking about a pair of sumti (not a pair of dogs
>or a pair of cats or a pair of dog+cat).
What do you mean by "sumti"? There are two uses for this word.
In one case, it is used for a grammatical class, in another,
for the referents of that grammatical construction. If the cats
and the dogs are the sumti of the first sentence, then a pair
of those sumti is a pair of animals. If {le remei} is not a
pair of animals, then I don't see how it could get tired, since
grammatical constructions should not get tired.
{le remei} clearly has to be a pair of animals in this example.
If {le mlatu} and {le gerku} refer to more than one cat and
one dog, or to an unknown number, then I suggest using {le romei}
instead. That should always work for a general "they".
>The explicit version would be
> le sumti smuni se remei
> the pair of sumti referents
>but there's no need to be that accurate as the listener could likely get
>that anyway.
Check again the definition of {mei} you're using. The x1
is a mass. The rest is a mess. (Fortunately one can just
ignore it. My ideal definition for {mei} would be x1 is an
n-some of x2, i.e. x1 is a sub-mass of x2 of cardinality n.
For example {lo 12mei be loi sovda} would be a dozen eggs.)
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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IIRC, ri, ra and ru skip sumti of: ri ra ru ko'[aeiou] mi do ti ta tu ...
Additionally, "ra" != "rixire". ra just refers to a further-than-last
sumti, not the next to last.
This sounds right, once said, so I withdraw my hope that {ri/a/u} is unambiguous, but hope this avoids the kind of doubling up that Nora suggested.
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Pierre Abbat
you have lost the point. What we need is a pro-sumti, belonging to the
ri-series of KOhA, that repeats any two or more of the preceding sumti. I
propose {xai}.
phma
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1. on "ri .e ra": My understanding is that "ri" would refer back to the
last sumti, which is the cat. Then, "ra" would refer back to the
next-to-last sumti - the first being "ri", which is NOT permanently
assigned, and so is available as a referent. This makes "ra" refer again
to the cat. You could instead (though I don't recommend it) use "ri .e ru"
or "ra .e ra".
Boy, I hope you are wrong about that (my Book is not handy): {ri/a/u} was one of the cases -- I thought -- where genuine accuracy was possible in pronouns. [Jordan, note the slippery "sumti" here]
<. What I'd probably do is use "gy. .e my.".>
Fuzzier in theory but probably more effective here (even than {ri/a} ). Do we really need a double glottal stop (The !Qon word for "ice box" springs to mind).
You always, of course, have the option (shorter than some of the
alternatives proposed) of using "le gerku .e le mlatu". Was is pycyn. who
once pointed out that repetition is also a form of reference (of course,
when he said it, it was witty).
<You always, of course, have the option (shorter than some of the
alternatives proposed) of using "le gerku .e le mlatu". Was is pycyn. who
once pointed out that repetition is also a form of reference (of course,
when he said it, it was witty).>
What he said was "Repetition is also anaphora," witty mainly if you recall that "anaphora" is Greek for "repetition" -- linguistic anaphora is mainly ways to avoid the literal version.
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>On {remei} as a solution, note also that {remei} refers to a mass and thus
>would be true if only one of the pair had the property in question. The
>result wanted would require something like {piro le remei cu tatpi}.
I disagree with both statements.
Starting with the second, {le remei} and {piro le remei}
refer to the same thing: the pair as a whole. To claim something
for each member we can use {ro lu'a le remei}. The Book says
that the default for {lei} is {pisu'o} instead of {piro} (which
would be the correct default) but this does not apply in this
case since the gadri we're using is {le}. {le remei} is the
pair, not some part of the pair.
As you know, even when I agree with your criticisms of it (as I do pretty much here), I am obligated to work by the baseline. Hence the implicit quantifier on masses is {pisu'o}. Now, to be sure, the implicit external quantifier on {le} is {ro}, so we are referring to all the dyadic masses I have in mind, but that is presumably just the one composed of the dog(s) and the cat(s). But that does NOT mean we are referring to the WHOLE of that mass. Absent some specific indication, we are dealing {pisu'o}ness. I am not perfectly sure that {piro} gets what I want (or, rather, avoids the one-tired-dog-case), but without it, the problem clearly remains.
<As for the first claim, it is based on the wrong idea that
properties of the members are automatically properties of the
mass. This is clearly not so for many properties, and I don't
see why one member being tired should make the pair tired.>
Nope, it is based on the complex idea that the properties of a mass are related in a variety of reasonably precise ways to properties of members of the massed set. We know that weight or yogurt-eating are simply additive, that (for team masses) winning is a causative resultant of the actions of individuals, and so on. But even in saying this we are often thinking of the mass as the whole of the mass, when -- barring explicit signs otherwise (or our winning this change) -- only some indefinit4e part of the mass is directly involved. Now, clearly if one dog in the mass of critters is tired, the some part of that mass is tired and so, in Lojban, the mass is tired: {le remei cu tatpi}. It may be unreasonable, but it is by the Book.
I like your reading of {mei} in the second letter, too.
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>{le remei} refers to a mass based on a two-membered set.
Whereas for me it refers to a two-membered mass. If we can't
get past this stumbling block, we'll continue talking past
each other.
<>I suspect this is English again, {lei bolci cu crino} is true -- at least
>this has been said authoritatively several times over the last 47 years --
>if
>even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot).
Yes, unfortunately it has been said authoritatively too many
times. I never saw actual usage take advantage of this "feature"
though.>
<>However, this is still
>off my point, which is in the this case case, that even when there are a
>hundred and one balls, the mass with just one of those balls as its only
>member can still be lei bolci.
In official Lojban, yes, {[pisu'o] lei bolci} is some part of
the mass of balls, so it can refer to the one ball.>
<But even in official Lojban I have never before seen the claim
that {le 101mei} could refer to the mass of one ball. It seems
outrageous and it would seem to make {mei} fairly useless.>
<Well, I guess it is possible to set up a classification scheme[of how the properties of a mass are related to the properties of its members] but in the end you need to examine the particular context before deciding in which class a given property falls. It's not something you could put in a dictionary.>
I would think it was a very important thing to put into a dictionary, even if it had several clauses for different situations. Are you saying that there are no rules for relating a property of a mass to those of its members? But many contrary cases have been cited -- and regularly are even in the semantically deficient Book.
<>The question about age in a mass raises a nasty question, that of
>identifying
>a mass (or distinguishing one mass from another, individuating a mass).
>Depending on how that is done (and there are a number of ways of doing it).
>We can a variety of answers.
Exactly. And the same works to some extent for every property,
some being of course more clear cut than others.>
<I hope I have not agreed with that, since I think that the set of
exactly the members is the relevant one, if we need to talk
of any set at all. And the place structure I had proposed for
{mei}, which you said you liked, had the mass of cardinality n
in x1, and a supermass (of indeterminate cardinality) in x2.>
<>Why we would want to
>say that the mass is also a mass of other sets is simply to make {lei gerku
>cu gunma le'i gerku} true -- as it intuitively is.
{le'i gerku} is the set of dogs I have in mind, and {piro lei gerku}
is the mass of the very same dogs. {pisu'o lei gerku} is some part
of that mass. {lei gerku cu gunma le'i gerku} is true with any of
the two quantifiers for {lei}. Since it is true with {piro} it
has perforce to be true with {pisu'o}. I don't see that any of this
requires that the mass have different members to those of the set.>
<>I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".>
>
>As usual -- the question Lojban doesn't ask -- enough for what? Can you
>come
>up with something other than "to declare that the whole mass is tired"?
No, I certainly can't give you a percentage. But there is no magic
formula that will tell you how many members have to be tired for the
group to be considered to be tired, that goes with the context.
Even for one person, there is no rule that will tell you when they
are tired, that also depends on the context.>
Jorge Llambias
la greg cusku di'e
>remind those of us who are too lazy to find out : what is meant by "sui
>generis"?
It's Latin for "of its own kind".
>A mass
>should be more than the sum of it's elements. I'm sure there must be some
>relation for which {lei broda cu brode .ijenai su'o le broda cu brode} is
>true.
Yes there is. For example: {lei bolci cu se culno le baktu ijenai
su'o le bolci cu se culno le baktu}.
But it can also be that the mass is somehow less than the sum of
it's elements, when there is some kind of overlap among the elements.
It all depends on how you define the sum, of course.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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robin
More sensible comment -
In English we'd probably disambiguate "they" by adding "both". What
would be the lojban equivalent (or am I opening a can of worms like
"would you like tea or coffee?")?
--
"We're clouds over the sea, or flecks of matter
in the ocean when the ocean seems lit from within.
I know I'm drunk when I start this ocean talk." - Rumi
Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent �niversitesi
Ankara 06533
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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Ahh, i'm using def in '94 cmavo list, which may be in error.
Yup.
<This is bullshit. "*le* remei" can't refer to a set no matter what x1
of remei is. le == individual, le'i == set, lei == mass.>
{le te fadni} had better refer to a set or come up with a very good reason why not -- and {lo te fadni} is definitely about a set. An INDIVIDUAL set (or several individual sets taken separately) but a set all the same. Where did this idea come from: it is an individual, set or mass of the appropriate sort, {le'i gunma} is about a set of masses and {le gunma} is about a mass. So, {le remei} is about a mass with two elements.
<I was talking about the sumti themselves -- that's the only way this works.
See below:>
As xorxes pointed out, {sumti} is used ambiguously in English: for both the linguistic expression and its referent. It is not ambiguous in Lojban (it is the expression) and I try to use it that way in English -- and take others as doing so as well, if possible. What DO you mean by "the sumti themselves"? Your text reads like something that fluctuates over the two English meanings and, when read conistently in one reading or the other, is clearly false (use-mention ambiguity in a peculiarly Lojbanic form).
<I was going on bad definition remei. the point was the "sumti smuni" part.
I'm talking about a pair of things refered to by sumti. The two sumti
referents mentioned were:
all of somenumber of dogs
all of somenumber of cats>
Well, unless the number is 1 in each case, this will not be a pair. "All" is a lousy reading in English (and a bad translation from Latin and Greek), "every" is better: the reference is each taken separately, not to any lumping (mass or set) of them -- {le} always comes down to a conjunction. There is no separate level of the sort you mention between the individual dogs and cats and their mass.
<The mei solution works because we're talking about pairs of sumti,
not pairs of animals.>
Either "sumti" means the referents, in which case we are talking about some number of animals, apparently two, but that not guaranteed or mentioned earlier, making the anaphora non-functional. Or "sumti" means the expressions and the claim that we are talking about them is simply false.
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>Now, to be sure, the implicit external
>quantifier on {le} is {ro}, so we are referring to all the dyadic masses I
>have in mind, but that is presumably just the one composed of the dog(s)
>and
>the cat(s). But that does NOT mean we are referring to the WHOLE of that
>mass. Absent some specific indication, we are dealing {pisu'o}ness.
That doesn't make sense to me. {le broda} refers to each of the
broda I have in mind, be it {le gerku} (each dog), {le gunma}
(each mass), or {le remei} (each pair). It does not refer to
some part of a dog, some part of a mass, or some part of a pair.
For that I'd have to say explicitly {pisu'o le broda}. The
implicit quantifier of {lei} plays no role here.
The second sentence is correct in general, the third for dogs but not for masses: {gerku} refers to dogs in the usual way, {gunma} and {remei} refer to masses in the usual way; the usual way to refer to dogs is as wholes, the usual way to refer to masses is as parts -- that is what the quantifiers on {lei} say.
<>Now, clearly if one dog in the mass of critters is tired,
>the some part of that mass is tired and so, in Lojban, the mass is tired:
>{le
>remei cu tatpi}. It may be unreasonable, but it is by the Book.
so I can't check, but does it go as far as to say that? I thought
it only messed up the implicit quantifier of {lei}. In any case,
when the Book makes no sense, I don't follow it.>
I don't suppose the Book does say this explicitly -- it is remarkably poor on semantics and ontology. But, on the assumption (which I am obligated to make if I am to learn **Lojban**, rather than a kindred -- or not so -- language) that the quantifiers on {lei} are correct, that has to be the way it works: {le remei} is, in context, exactly equivalent to {lei re danlu} and subject to same interpretation -- if not quite exactly the same grammar.
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Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
>If all you mean by your objection is that things like what
>gets added (if anything specifiable by places structure) and so on, then,
>yes, every predicate probably has its own rules (place structures tend to
>be
>different), but that hardly seems a reason to say there are no rules. But
>it
>is a good reason to put those rules in the dictionary.
Well, a special rule for every occasion sounds very close
to no rules to me. I was not able to write a general rule for
the weight case that would apply to a class of properties.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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py...@aol.com
The '98 cmavo list calls it a set also. Don't see how it matters
anyway though. What cmavo liste are you looking at?
My list is from Sept '94, right after the Logfest at which the issue was settled. I am sorry to here that '98 still has the older form.
<Ahh it sounded like you meant "le remei" as a set/mass (which it isn't).>
I did mean that {le remei} refers to a mass ("le remei" is a Lojban expression). You said that something beginning with {le} could not refer to a mass or a set and I pointed to a case -- other than {le remei} of an ex[ression that has to refer to a set to make sense. I would argue that {le se remei} is another such case, but that is begging the question in this discussion.
<> > I was talking about the sumti themselves -- that's the only way this works.
> > See below:
>
> As xorxes pointed out, {sumti} is used ambiguously in English: for both the
> linguistic expression and its referent. It is not ambiguous in Lojban (it is
> the expression) and I try to use it that way in English -- and take others as
> doing so as well, if possible. What DO you mean by "the sumti themselves"?
> Your text reads like something that fluctuates over the two English meanings
> and, when read conistently in one reading or the other, is clearly false
> (use-mention ambiguity in a peculiarly Lojbanic form).
been using to refer to la'e of a sumti.>
I take this to mean that you are talking about the expressions used, not the things mentioned by suing tose expressions. But then your claim -- that the referent of {le remei} is the two sumti is just false (in the present context), for the *expressions* are not referred to at all.
<> > I was going on bad definition remei. the point was the "sumti smuni" part.
> > I'm talking about a pair of things refered to by sumti. The two sumti
> > referents mentioned were:
> > all of somenumber of dogs
> > all of somenumber of cats
>
> Well, unless the number is 1 in each case, this will not be a pair. "All" is
> a lousy reading in English (and a bad translation from Latin and Greek),
> "every" is better: the reference is each taken separately, not to any lumping
> (mass or set) of them -- {le} always comes down to a conjunction. There is
> no separate level of the sort you mention between the individual dogs and
> cats and their mass.
sumti. No matter how many animals are refered to. "le remei" being
"the pair" being the speaker's description (ala "le") of "the
referents of a pair of previous sumti". I don't know how much
clearer it can get than that, so i'm out of this thread unless ya
address that instead of addressing one-of-the-many-other-things-which-
the-speaker-could-describe-as-a-pair.>
Yes, there are only two sumt -- expressions, {le gerku} and {le mlatu}. And the number of things they each refer to is irrelevant to that fact. But {le remei} does not refer to that pair, since neither aexpression nor a team of expressions can be tired. Only living creatures (and probably only those of a certain degree of complexity) can be tired, and expressions aren't living creatures (Borges notwithstanding).
You want {le remei} to refer to a mass (or whatever) composed of the referents of these two expressions. But the size of that mass will vary depending on the number of referents there are -- not on the number of expressions used to refer to them. The size of the referent of {lu'o le gerku} varies on the number things referred to by {le gerku} and does not depend at all upon the fact that those things are all referred to by a single expression. To be sure, I suppose that {lu'o le gerku} refers to only one mass (though I am not sure about that), but, so does {lu'o le gerku e le mlatu}. It is the number of referents, not the number of referring expressions, that decides the size of (the set underlying) a mass.
You could get what you want, maybe, in some other way, though, since it is not something I have ever thought to say, I am not sure how.
Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
>Now, to be sure, the implicit external
>quantifier on {le} is {ro}, so we are referring to all the dyadic masses I
>have in mind, but that is presumably just the one composed of the dog(s)
>and
>the cat(s). But that does NOT mean we are referring to the WHOLE of that
>mass. Absent some specific indication, we are dealing {pisu'o}ness.
That doesn't make sense to me. {le broda} refers to each of the
broda I have in mind, be it {le gerku} (each dog), {le gunma}
(each mass), or {le remei} (each pair). It does not refer to
some part of a dog, some part of a mass, or some part of a pair.
For that I'd have to say explicitly {pisu'o le broda}. The
implicit quantifier of {lei} plays no role here.
>Now, clearly if one dog in the mass of critters is tired,
>the some part of that mass is tired and so, in Lojban, the mass is tired:
>{le
>remei cu tatpi}. It may be unreasonable, but it is by the Book.
I'm not sure it is by the Book, I don't have it with me now
so I can't check, but does it go as far as to say that? I thought
it only messed up the implicit quantifier of {lei}. In any case,
when the Book makes no sense, I don't follow it.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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<<
I am getting lost trying to make sense of the discussion, and it appears that
you have lost the point.
>>
<<
What we need is a pro-sumti, belonging to the
ri-series of KOhA, that repeats any two or more of the preceding sumti. I
propose {xai}.
>>
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la greg cusku di'e
>A mass
>should be more than the sum of it's elements. I'm sure there must be some
>relation for which {lei broda cu brode .ijenai su'o le broda cu brode} is
>true.
xorxes example works fine, but what does this particular sentence have to do with anything (greg's note never got here)? "sum" is a handy term of art because it is used already for two major cases and often informally for several others, but it is not
something that requires all or any of the members to have the properties of the mass.
In fact, one of the sum senses almost guarantees that this won't happen the weight case.
xorxes:
<But it can also be that the mass is somehow less than the sum of
it's elements, when there is some kind of overlap among the elements.
It all depends on how you define the sum, of course.>
robin
>This is bullshit. "*le* remei" can't refer to a set no matter what x1
>of remei is. le == individual, le'i == set, lei == mass.
>
>
Now that's interesting. "remei" means "is a pair", so "le remei" means
"that which I call a pair". I don't see a problem here. The
"individuality" of "le" is, I think, in the eye of the observer - by
using "le remei", I convey that I am thinking of the pair as an entity ,
which is surely what is called for here.
Jorge Llambias
la pycyn cusku di'e
><There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.>
>
>There is no reason why it can't be; but there is also no reason why it has
>to
>be, which is the point here.
But there is a reason why it has to be. {le broda} normally
refers to a broda, not to part of a broda. That's what
{pisu'o le broda} is for. There is no reason to make
exceptions for masses, irrespective of what the implicit
quantifier of {lei} or {loi} or anything else is.
>There is no reason why {pisu'o} can't be piro
>either, but it doesn't have to be.
We're talking at different levels here. Obviously {pisu'o}
is not {piro}, even though in some cases both can be true
together.
But {le broda} refers to full broda, not partial broda.
For example, {le broda cu brode le brodi} is always
equivalent to {le brodi cu se brode le broda}. This is because
you can freely switch the order of two {ro} quantifiers (the
implicit ones for {le}). However, if you now introduce the
notion that {le broda} could sometimes be {pisu'o le broda},
depending on the semantics of {broda}, the switch is no longer
possible, because {ro} and {pisu'o} cannot change their order
without affecting meaning! I can't imagine why you would favor
such a move.
><The way I see it, the properties of
>tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
>dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
>that of the mass.
>
>So, how do they work? I see postman-chasing as directly analogous to
>piano-toting, which can be done by three guys together even if only two of
>them ever lay hands on the piano (or housepainting if you like that
>better).
Certainly, the third guy might not lay hands on the piano and still
be said to be part of the piano movers, but not any third party
unrelated to the moving. There has to be a relevant participation
in the event.
>And I see being tired as being like being green, true of a mass if true of
>one element.
But a mass is not green if one element is green. A mass of two
hundred white balls with one green ball in their midst is not
green. At least not any more than a person is blue if they
have blue eyes.
>(remember -- as I think you occasionally do not) that in
>Lojban, {lei} behaves in this respect exactly like {loi}.
You rmember that we are talking of {le remei}, not about
{[pisu'o] lei broda}. Of course I have no objection to
{pisu'o lei bolci cu crino} if at least one of the balls
is green, but that's "some part of the balls is green" in
English, and not "the mass of balls is green".
><But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
>members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
>automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
>widespread in Lojban lore.>
>
>That masses have all the properties of any member may be (but I don't think
>really is) widespread in Lojban lore, but I certainly don't hold it (and
>have
>spoken against it within the last few days). It is, however, the default
>position when nothing else clearly has a role -- logical sum when neither
>numerical nor participatory applies.
That's not how I see it. This logical sum applies very
rarely (are there any clear examples where it does?) and I
certainly don't think it is the default position.
>And it is hard to see how either
>numerical or participatory applies in the case of tiredness (a little
>clearer
>in the case of postman-chasing). Of course, there are almost certainly
>other
>kinds of exceptions and they should be counted in as soon as explained, but
>for now I don't see an explanation that works for tiredness aside from
>saying
>that it is sui generis -- which is not very convincing.
Every property is sui generis in this regard. Not all properties
of members need even make sense with respect to a mass. For
example, consider age. What is the age of a mass of people?
The age of the youngest? Of the oldest? Their average age?
I would say that a group of people can be said to have an
age only if the ages of all the members cluster around some
value, but not if the distribution is very dispersed.
><Assuming {ko'a} and {ko'e} refer to individuals, then
>{ko'a joi ko'e} refers to a mass of two individuals, and
>{ko'a broda} being true does not imply that {ko'a joi ko'e broda}.>
>
>True in general, but not the issue here, which is whether a mass of a
>subset
>is also a mass of the set as a whole.
I'm not sure I see how the question is important. The members of
a mass form a given set, and that is the relevant set for that
mass. That the members can also belong to other sets is of
course also true, but why would we want to say that the mass is
a mass of those sets? In any case, it is just a definition
of what "mass of a set" means, but it doesn't change much else.
>But
>the point again is whether this mass from less than all the members of a
>set
>is a mass from that set. If it is, {le remei} can be just the dog (or the
>mass that consists of just the dog, for which the inference from member to
>mass seems to go through unscathed).
Well, then we clearly don't want that. We want {remei} for pairs,
not for singletons or pairs. We already have {su'eremei} for that.
>{remei} only identifies the size of the
>set, not of the mass. On the other hand, if it is not, then lei gerku na
>gunma le'i gerku, even when dogs are meant all around.
{lei gerku na gunma le'i gerku} means (with implicit {pisu'o})
That it is false that there is some part of the mass of dogs
which corresponds to the set of dogs. I can't see how
that could be true with any interpretation of {lei}.
>No one -- so far as I can tell -- thinks that {lo sovda paremei} means that
>there are only twelve eggs altogether in the world forever, etc.
Good!
>I am less
>sure that it means "a dozen eggs", since I don't generally take that as a
>mass (except in a recipe: "add a dozen eggs" and maybe a few other places).
>Generally, I think "a dozen eggs" is just {pare sovda}, since I intend then
>to be used one by one. Or maybe {le sovda se paremei}.
Well, it doesn't make sense to argue that point without a context.
I tend to think of a dozen of anything as one thing, but that may
be just me. The point was whether {lo 12mei} could refer to
half a dozen. I hope not.
>You still us an explanation of "the group as a whole should be tired" that
>is different from both "one member of the group is tired" and "all the
>members of the group are tired."
I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".
>Well, the case to watch for is {lei nanmu cu tatpi ije lei nanmu cu naku
>tatpi}. The others work because they are logical contradictions, not
>because
>they say anything useful about masses (or anything else).
{pisu'o lei nanmu cu tatpi ije pisu'o lei nanmu naku tatpi} is
perfectly possible. What is nonsense is to translate it as
"the mass is tired and the mass is not tired", when the right
translation is "part of the mass is tired and part of it is not".
If {pisu'o} is the implicit quantifier of {lei}, then let us
stop translating {lei broda} as "the mass of broda", which is
clearly wrong. English "the" does not correspond to {pisu'o},
it corresponds to {piro}.
><But notice that {pisu'o} is the right quantifier for {loi},
>just like {su'o} is for {lo}. {loi smacu cu crino}
>says that some mice are green, about the same as {lo smacu cu crino},
>since there is not much difference here in being green together
>or individually.>
>
>Thanks for emphasizing this difference; it does get lost occasionally in
>these discussions.
Yes. The confusion comes from the bad habit of translating
{loi broda} as "the mass of broda" instead of as "some broda
together".
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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py...@aol.com
<I would have said overlapping was something things did well long
before it could be metaphorically extended to sets!
Anyway, consider for example a wall covered with pictures.
Each picture covers a certain area, but some of the pictures
overlap, so the area covered by the mass of pictures is less
than the sum of the areas covered by each picture.>
An interesting problem in idees fixes: I was so wrapped up in the "overlapping" metaphor that I did not even think of literal overlapping. Thanks for the example.
<>What is emerging is the fairly clear evidence that masses
>are intensional, with all the horrors that that entails: two masses with
>exactly the same mebers may not be identical.
Presumably at least in essential properties and probably also in the relation between mass properties and individual properties (going to intensionals is a traditional way of putting off problems with extensional properties).
<>And from that I think it
>follows as a possibility that two groups of people with the same properties
>individually may comprise two masses that have different properties.
hockey team, which happen to have the same members? But that
would be like saying that the teacher and Bob's mom, which
happen to be the same person, have different properties.>
Well, I was thinking of tow different groups of people doing the same things, rather than the same group of people doing different things, but it would surely work for them as well (see above). I would be like saying that the teacher and Bob's mom -- the same person -- has different propreties. And so they do: Bob's mom has necessarily had a child and the teacher has not, the teacher necessarily teaches, Bob's mom does not. "How is 'The Morning Star = The Evening Star', if true, different from 'The morning Star = the Morning Star?" except this is the other side of that coin.
<> That
>is, the relation between the properties of the members of a mass (including
>whether they are members of that mass) and the properties of the mass is an
>intensional one -- not generally reducible to any direct reading from fact
>to
>fact without going through at least the intensionality of the definition of
>the mass. I'd sure like to find another way to do this.
Oh, I thought you were denying that mass definitions were intensional. I am merely hoping they are not but see no way to avoid it at the moment if the way of regularizing the mass notions that I have been playing with does not work.
<>{le panopamei} means "the mass I have in
>mind of 101 things." For this to make any sense at all, there has to be
>more
>than one such mass, so that I can pick one to have in mind, and the only
>way
>I can see to do that, short of intensionality (which I am trying to avoid,
>if
>possible, remember) is to allow submasses to count.
involve intensionality, so I don't understand what you mean here.
You seem to be saying that somehow the 101 things get fixed first
and then {le} is used to select from masses of those things, but
that is not right. {le} selects from all posible 101-somes, and
there are plenty to choose from. {lo'i panopamei}, the set of all
101-somes, is a very large set. (And in any case the idea that
for {le broda} to make any sense there has to be more than one
broda is not right either.)>
Well, the first part is stretching, since we have always said "in context" for these examples and so we are here talking about those 101 ball, all white but the one green. So, which of the 2^101 submasses do I pick? And in any given case the critters will be picked (in some loose sense) by the context and then the massification done. And {le broda} only makes sense if there is other than 1 broda -- which there always is with {le} since it is non-veridical.
<><Well, I guess it is possible to set up a classification scheme[of how the
>properties of a mass are related to the properties of its members] but in
>the
>end you need to examine the particular context before deciding in which
>class
>a given property falls. It's not something you could put in a dictionary.>
>
>I would think it was a very important thing to put into a dictionary, even
>if
>it had several clauses for different situations. Are you saying that there
>are no rules for relating a property of a mass to those of its members?
>But
>many contrary cases have been cited -- and regularly are even in the
>semantically deficient Book.
one of the clearest cases. We have something like:
ko'a grake ko'e ko'i
fo'a grake fo'e fo'i
ko'a joi fo'a grake le sumji be ko'e bei fo'e ko'i no'u fo'i
It's hard to give a general rule because somehow you have to specify
that ko'i has to be equal to fo'i, and you have to select the x2
place as the one that gets additioned. We can't say for a general
{broda} that it is in the same class as {grake} and leave it at
that, unless the place structures are very similar.>
Looks fine to me, except that part of the rule -- or part of the question -- has to specify the same standard in both members or we are back to an apples and oranges case. If all you mean by your objection is that things like what gets added (if anything specifiable by places structure) and so on, then, yes, every predicate probably has its own rules (place structures tend to be different), but that hardly seems a reason to say there are no rules. But it is a good reason to put those rules in the dictionary.
Adam Raizen
> You seem to be missing the fundamental point. The are only *two*
> sumti. No matter how many animals are refered to. "le remei" being
> "the pair" being the speaker's description (ala "le") of "the
> referents of a pair of previous sumti". I don't know how much
> clearer it can get than that, so i'm out of this thread unless ya
> address that instead of addressing
one-of-the-many-other-things-which-
> the-speaker-could-describe-as-a-pair.
Well, 'remei' could certainly be a pair of masses, such as a mass made
up of a mass of several dogs and a mass of several cats; however the
original sentence was 'le gerku cu jersi le mlatu', where the dog(s)
and cat(s) are referred to individually. To refer to them as
individuals in one sentence and then implicitly switch to masses in
the next is probably at least misleading. If there were several dogs
and cats, and the original sentence was 'lei gerku cu jersi lei
mlatu', then referring to them all as 'le remei' would be more
plausible. In any case, you could also use a more generic gismu to
refer back, such as in 'le danlu cu tatpi binxo'.
mu'o mi'e .adam.
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><There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.>
>
>There is no reason why it can't be; but there is also no reason why it has
>to
>be, which is the point here.
But there is a reason why it has to be. {le broda} normally
refers to a broda, not to part of a broda. That's what
{pisu'o le broda} is for. There is no reason to make
exceptions for masses, irrespective of what the implicit
quantifier of {lei} or {loi} or anything else is.
<There is no reason why {pisu'o} can't be piro
>either, but it doesn't have to be.
We're talking at different levels here. Obviously {pisu'o}
is not {piro}, even though in some cases both can be true
together.
But {le broda} refers to full broda, not partial broda.
For example, {le broda cu brode le brodi} is always
equivalent to {le brodi cu se brode le broda}. This is because
you can freely switch the order of two {ro} quantifiers (the
implicit ones for {le}). However, if you now introduce the
notion that {le broda} could sometimes be {pisu'o le broda},
depending on the semantics of {broda}, the switch is no longer
possible, because {ro} and {pisu'o} cannot change their order
without affecting meaning! I can't imagine why you would favor
such a move.>
Beyond that, I'm not clear about your point. Yes {le broda} means the whole broda, so {le remei} means the whole mass based on a pair of things. So, what follows against my position, which is NOT that {le remei} means the same as {pisu'o le remei} -- which would ruin the whole joke. So, the conversions go through without any problem. I think ignoration elenchi again, maybe with a little straw man.
<><The way I see it, the properties of
>tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
>dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
>that of the mass.
>
>So, how do they work? I see postman-chasing as directly analogous to
>piano-toting, which can be done by three guys together even if only two of
>them ever lay hands on the piano (or housepainting if you like that
>better).
Certainly, the third guy might not lay hands on the piano and still
be said to be part of the piano movers, but not any third party
unrelated to the moving. There has to be a relevant participation
in the event.>
<>And I see being tired as being like being green, true of a mass if true of
>one element.
But a mass is not green if one element is green. A mass of two
hundred white balls with one green ball in their midst is not
green. At least not any more than a person is blue if they
have blue eyes.>
<>(remember -- as I think you occasionally do not) that in
>Lojban, {lei} behaves in this respect exactly like {loi}.
You rmember that we are talking of {le remei}, not about
{[pisu'o] lei broda}. Of course I have no objection to
{pisu'o lei bolci cu crino} if at least one of the balls
is green, but that's "some part of the balls is green" in
English, and not "the mass of balls is green".>
<><But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
>members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
>automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
>widespread in Lojban lore.>
>
>That masses have all the properties of any member may be (but I don't think
>really is) widespread in Lojban lore, but I certainly don't hold it (and
>have
>spoken against it within the last few days). It is, however, the default
>position when nothing else clearly has a role -- logical sum when neither
>numerical nor participatory applies.
That's not how I see it. This logical sum applies very
rarely (are there any clear examples where it does?) and I
certainly don't think it is the default position.>
>And it is hard to see how either
>numerical or participatory applies in the case of tiredness (a little
>clearer
>in the case of postman-chasing). Of course, there are almost certainly
>other
>kinds of exceptions and they should be counted in as soon as explained, but
>for now I don't see an explanation that works for tiredness aside from
>saying
>that it is sui generis -- which is not very convincing.
Every property is sui generis in this regard. Not all properties
of members need even make sense with respect to a mass. For
example, consider age. What is the age of a mass of people?
The age of the youngest? Of the oldest? Their average age?
I would say that a group of people can be said to have an
age only if the ages of all the members cluster around some
value, but not if the distribution is very dispersed.>
<>True in general, but not the issue here, which is whether a mass of a
>subset
>is also a mass of the set as a whole.
I'm not sure I see how the question is important. The members of
a mass form a given set, and that is the relevant set for that
mass. That the members can also belong to other sets is of
course also true, but why would we want to say that the mass is
a mass of those sets? In any case, it is just a definition
of what "mass of a set" means, but it doesn't change much else.>
<>But
>the point again is whether this mass from less than all the members of a
>set
>is a mass from that set. If it is, {le remei} can be just the dog (or the
>mass that consists of just the dog, for which the inference from member to
>mass seems to go through unscathed).
Well, then we clearly don't want that. We want {remei} for pairs,
not for singletons or pairs. We already have {su'eremei} for that.>
<{lei gerku na gunma le'i gerku} means (with implicit {pisu'o})
That it is false that there is some part of the mass of dogs
which corresponds to the set of dogs. I can't see how
that could be true with any interpretation of {lei}.>
<>No one -- so far as I can tell -- thinks that {lo sovda paremei} means that
>there are only twelve eggs altogether in the world forever, etc.
Good!>
<>I am less
>sure that it means "a dozen eggs", since I don't generally take that as a
>mass (except in a recipe: "add a dozen eggs" and maybe a few other places).
>Generally, I think "a dozen eggs" is just {pare sovda}, since I intend then
>to be used one by one. Or maybe {le sovda se paremei}.
Well, it doesn't make sense to argue that point without a context.
I tend to think of a dozen of anything as one thing, but that may
be just me. The point was whether {lo 12mei} could refer to
half a dozen. I hope not.>
<>You still us an explanation of "the group as a whole should be tired" that
>is different from both "one member of the group is tired" and "all the
>members of the group are tired."
I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".>
>tatpi}. The others work because they are logical contradictions, not
>because
>they say anything useful about masses (or anything else).
{pisu'o lei nanmu cu tatpi ije pisu'o lei nanmu naku tatpi} is
perfectly possible. What is nonsense is to translate it as
"the mass is tired and the mass is not tired", when the right
translation is "part of the mass is tired and part of it is not".>
<Yes. The confusion comes from the bad habit of translating
{loi broda} as "the mass of broda" instead of as "some broda
together".>
<
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Jordan DeLong
> In a message dated 7/3/2002 4:10:29 PM Central Daylight Time,
>
>
> > I'm fine with context resolving those particular issues. I don't