From lojbab@lojban.org Thu Oct 18 10:57:55 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:57:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao104.cox.net ([68.230.240.46]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IiZd0-0004qp-GJ for llg-members@lojban.org; Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:57:55 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo01.cox.net ([68.1.16.119]) by eastrmmtao104.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20071018175744.PVQQ3686.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo01.cox.net> for ; Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:57:44 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo01.cox.net with bizsmtp id 1txh1Y00X3y5FKc0000000; Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:57:44 -0400 Message-ID: <47179EF7.5060902@lojban.org> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:59:19 -0400 From: Bob LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: llg-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] Re: LLG AGM 2007: New Business References: <20071016193843.GI5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016194330.GF28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016202338.GL5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016213405.GG28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016213807.GO5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016220537.GI28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016222008.GK28745@mercury.ccil.org> <4715D3E3.5000003@gmail.com> <20071018132508.GD15126@mercury.ccil.org> In-Reply-To: <20071018132508.GD15126@mercury.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 449 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members John Cowan wrote: >>[* In talking about the official design I'm assuming that in the official >>design the e/o distinction was one of specificity, and that veridicality >>was a minor detail given undue prominence as a result of some early >>documentation compiled by linguistically inexpert people.] > > Indeed. I don't think that JCB considered the distinction to be specificity/nonspecificity. Historically there was only "le", but "le" was non-veridical. The alternative to "le broda" was (the equivalent of) "su'oda poi broda", which was both veridical and nonspecific. Then JCB wanted to make use of a quantified form "pa broda" that was both naturalistic and logically well defined. There were debates between whether "pa broda" meant "pa da poi broda", and I don't pretend to understand what was finally decided, since the last time I tried to debate this, everyone managed to get me to put my foot in my mouth. A late addition was "lea broda" which meant the equivalent of our "ro lo ro broda" - veridical and universal and distributive (non-mass), but nothing was said about existential import - explicit existential import. The advantage of "lea broda" is that "pa broda" was merely overriding the outer quantifier and thus was explicitly defined as "pa lea ro broda". "lea" became our "lo". Sometime between that decision (pre November 1980) and when I started documenting Lojban, pc came to the opinion that the internal quantifier was su'o rather than ro. I can't be sure that he did so because of a change in JCB's thinking, his own thinking, or something I said in our discussions (I remember that I attached much significance to the symmetry in the quantifiers - "su'o le ro" and "ro lo su'o". The one thing that is clear in my recollection and notes was the veridicality of the description. I don't think "lo" was inherently non-specific at first - indeed the word "specific" never came up, but when it finally did, I figured that if specificity was important, people would prepend a le + quantifier on the front ("le pa lo broda") to make it explicitly specific because "in-mind" and "quantified", and they would use a quantifier with no gadri for non-specific ("pa broda" or "su'o broda" for a non-specific quantifier as well). I suspect that JCB included in his concept of mass description (our loi) the non-specific - after all, a non-specific distributed broda is just an instance of the Trobriand Islander's Mr. Broda. But of course JCB also used masses non-distributionally (like our masses), and I for one tried to use "lo" whenever I was being distributional. At this point I will stop because if I haven't done so yet, I will probably muddle something up. But my point, I think, is that "specific" wasn't part of the verbiage we originally used in the design, and if the gadri have developed a specific/non-specific distinction, it is probably because of the habits of the primarily-English speakers who looked for and found such a distinction. lojbab