From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Mar 15 19:44:58 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:44:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Lj2p0-0004G1-OI for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:44:58 -0700 Received: from wf-out-1314.google.com ([209.85.200.175]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Lj2ox-0004Fl-2D for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:44:58 -0700 Received: by wf-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 23so2884687wfg.25 for ; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:44:54 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=oiDanKnxbxUXYdizRb8NIIaFadgnrC7miepRO4fDad8=; b=Fr7XZIkkCjCfQRQI+2wH6v8ecMuJMlGWuLMUfaKjj3KuXqsYzhwg7ftvHoKZ/XEM7R NgU2y6FdWSfRwIr60zELTNFXxw41KQJclfdRjOQDCKuy+JXcq/TrkZZTRHyo/qCwP3zI 9GujlCDel4dxtNdNdUXBTRbtv98mbr8V4Bv/w= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=tJFZSo3IjWJapM2bs20iOiqIixPICJUNMFzEasw53rUywzVtGgySMp30ycAO6Jb54J jfQplVzKYFOcPjBc2wZ1vnwbwrBiPQoTTvVqVx5Ptz5SC7n2rd1HnZFMfAG+DOgiahWs eTayDM9pI1DepNfRWRBIjr6e6UJv48KW4hlSE= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.135.13 with SMTP id i13mr1899733wfd.217.1237171493972; Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:44:53 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <66941D44-2E0E-4A9B-8882-27FE28D2C0F4@zoominternet.net> References: <66941D44-2E0E-4A9B-8882-27FE28D2C0F4@zoominternet.net> Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:44:53 -0400 Message-ID: <96f789a60903151944p381f842v388624e85ecf1f28@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Q about general statements From: Michael Turniansky To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 1415 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mturniansky@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Robert Baruch wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm totally n00b at Lojban. I'm hoping someone has some advice! > > I'd like to state that "Cities are in countries." I'm pretty sure this > statement is logically meant to say that every particular instance of a city > is a member of one and only one country. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of > a molehill and there's some easy way to say this, but here's my thought > process: > > I've been puzzling through chapter 6 of the reference grammar. At first I > started off with "loi tcadu cu cmima ??? gugde." but the description of > "loi" says that this really means "some". The example shown is loi cinfo cu > xabju le fi'ortu'a. = Lions dwell in Africa, but then it goes on to say that > this statement says nothing about ALL lions. > > lo'e doesn't seem to work either, because again, that refers to a typical > something, and doesn't include ALL somethings. > > Next we come to "ro", which means all-of, so "ro le tcadu...": all-of > the-ones-described-as cities... but that still doesn't quite say what I > want: "All cities are in countries" doesn't imply a bidirectional n-to-1 > relationship (If Paris is a city, and all cities are in countries, then > Paris is in countries -- exists in multiple countries at once.) > > Okay, the next section seems promising, in that it lists je'abo, that which > indeed is. So "je'abo le tcadu cu cmima...": That-which-indeed-is > one-described-as-a city is a member of... > > But I'm having trouble with "one and only one country". "pa le gugde", one > something-described-as-a country" again doesn't imply the bidirectional > relationship I'm looking for. > > Halp? Actually, you basically had it... ro tcadu cu se stizu pa gugde. The key is that when there is more then one quantifier, each "scopes" over those that follow. You will see this covered in detail in chapter 16 of the grammar. So what this means is that for each city, there is exactly one country in which it is situated. It does NOT mean that all cities are located in the same country (which would be the case if you had reversed it as "pa gugde cu stizu ro tcadu"). Hope that helps? (P.S. My son's first name is the same as your last name) --gejyspa