From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Nov 05 15:37:16 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Kxrw3-0003Gd-Bu for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:16 -0800 Received: from rv-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.198.246]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Kxrvy-0003GN-G0 for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:15 -0800 Received: by rv-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id b17so273696rvf.46 for ; Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:09 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=solTPmR02a9bv0UpjFRuG48o+p/BCKRlvtiGOk33h14=; b=vj4apYV2yquQMnIjgDyIPUm/qvRHwrq006qFZL4+NQqVckQWJ12GIIH8Wd4y9aWpTr R6SsSqVACmupnS97udKWjh6CJXxMhEwUrZ8U37C+NMXfshZkosw8cglUBiABE4xRc/JR F6EKIMkBGvrueEqQjD2DKC0PwoRuNlxQ2S1R4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition :references; b=FFXZc93uAHnWU5idYija9v4x2mVw5DY7whjgB0GDw2IlGJDS43VjvYKJORF6NULpWZ GE+6+NzljxT8RO3qk49M9HKu1hk/kbgFSS/MmcaKRPXo32ILD/YmezseTSytniUsheh0 7wTOBtJWwRyTEwrCcfjR+yCXLidbEfu1Vc39Y= Received: by 10.141.63.20 with SMTP id q20mr769419rvk.213.1225928229375; Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:09 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.141.194.15 with HTTP; Wed, 5 Nov 2008 15:37:09 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <925d17560811051537t746aff1bgf1537b26bb6de6c8@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 20:37:09 -0300 From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?=" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: lo and le In-Reply-To: <166004.45075.qm@web30405.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <166004.45075.qm@web30405.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 992 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jjllambias@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Tom Gysel wrote: > 'Le' = 'one or more specific things which i describe as' > 'lo' = 'one or more of all the things which really are' > > So 'lo' and 'le' both have two properties: 1.they are either specific or > non-specific, 'lo' does not really have to be non-specific. > and 2. they are naming something which either is actually what > you name it , or you're not sure that it really is what you name it. The non-veridical use of 'le' is rarely, if ever, due to not being sure whether the description fits. You may choose a description which you may not be sure fits, but that's an unlikely reason for choosing the description. You choose the description because you think it will be a useful one for your audience to identify what you are referring to. In some extreme cases a description may be useful even though it's not veridical. But that's not the usual case. > 2. We're talking about a specific thing, AND not sure if it really is a what > we name it. Corresponds to the Lojban gadri ' le '. 'le' is more like this: we're talking about a specific thing, and we're pretty sure the description we use will be useful for the audience to identify which specific thing we mean. We are not overly concerned with whether the description actually and truly fits or not, as long as it is useful. > 3. We're talking about a non-specific thing, AND are sure it is what we name > it. Corresponds to the gadri ' lo '. It doesn't have to be a non-specific thing with 'lo'. It only has to be something that fits the description. > 4. The most sure and clear. We're talking about a specific thing AND are > really sure it's what we name it. > > So 'le' adds more clarity to the vagueness, as does 'lo'. > > The fourth option does even more so, but why is there no gadri for that in > lojban? (I guess in english this would be the article 'the') I'm not sure English 'the' has a veridicality requirement. For example, this is from a movie review: "Then, the dog reveals that it is not really a dog, but some sort of alien organism with the power to mimic other life-forms" So "the dog" is used to describe something that is not really a dog, and the speaker is not even uncertain about it. But it's still a useful way of describing what they're talking about. > How would you translate something like that into lojban? If you want to describe some particular dog that you have in mind, and you want to go out of your way to insist that it is an actual dog, you may say {le ca'a gerku}, "that which I describe as being really a dog", or better yet: {le gerku noi ca'a gerku}, "the dog, which really is a dog". But that's an infrequent situation. The normal situation is that when you choose a description to identify something, you will choose it because it fits, so you don't really need to insist that it does. mu'o mi'e xorxes