I am sorry to see {le= } and {lo} here again, since I thought we got through those many years ago.= I am old school enough to still think that {le plise} refers to some= thing(s) that I have specified to myself and hope you will understand and = that I am calling apples to help you get the right thing(s), whether they r= eally are apples or not. {lo plise} refers to apples, but which ones = is left up to context, etc. etc.; I haven't anything specific in mind and m= aybe don't even care. xorlo has clarified this in various ways, but d= oes not -- to me -- seem to have changed the basic character. As a co= nsequence, I dislike expressions like {ci lo plise} since they seem to me t= o be partitive on a given (how ever indefinitely) bunch of apples. To= be sure, in this case, the bunch is given: the ones in the basket. But the expression is still discommoding. Since we are= on about "any" officially, it seems best to stick, as much as possible, to= quantified variables, where "any" mainly is. Unfortunately, some of = the examples asked about did not lend themselves to that sort of translatio= n -- the ones requiring specifics, which quantifiers cannot generally give.= {da poi plise} is just about as inspecific (and indefinite) as possi= ble, while still sticking to apples. {lo plise} moves from that somewhat, i= f only pragmatically. {le plise} moves to very specific, but leaves a= pples behind, in principle, though rarely in practice.

I suppose tha= t {ci lo ro da poi plise} is somehow grammatical, though I can't quite work= it out. It seems to amount to just {ci lo ro plise}, three of all th= e apples there are.
{ci da plise} says that there are exactly three appl= es in the universe. {ci da poi plise zo'u mi citka da}, like {mi citka ci da poi plise}, says I eat three apples -- without any comment abo= ut how many remain uneaten.

From:<= /b> selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 6:15 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "Any" and {ro}

=20 =20 =20

Am 29.08.2012 00:52, sch= rieb Jacob Errington:

On 28 August 2012 12:39, l= a gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

OK. Please everyone translate the following sentences.

1. "I'm gonna eat three apples from that basket" [some specific apples, namely the red one. the yellow one and the green one but I'm too lazy to mention it]

2. "I'm gonna eat any three apples from that basket"
3. "Give me any three apples from the basket" 4. "Give me three apples from the basket" [not known whether I need some specific apples or not]
gleki, Lojban doesn't really distinguish this. What real information is being conveyed that is so important by that addition of "any"? There are n apples in the basket. You tell someone you're going to eat three. They expect that at some time in the future, after you've eaten them, that there will be n-3 apples. That's it. If the listener *cares* about which apples you're planning on eating, they'll *ask*. The distinction is unnecessary, as evidenced in selpa'i's reply, i.e. the one you thought was a joke. .i mi citka ci lo plise I'm going to eat three apples. Whether those apples are specific or not isn't really important, and thus isn't specified.
But this doesn't say which three apples you are going to eat, and it does so explicitly. The outer quantifier gives you unspecific referents. This is a lot like tense, in Lojban. Specifying tense can become superfluous in the same way that specificity can too. However, I do agree, there are few ways to incorporate specificity into determining lojban referent sets. In my opinion, {lo} is unspecific as to specificity, which makes it the all-purpose article. I personally dislike {le}, but I don't think that it should disappear because it does form the only way to really be specific. {lo} can be as specific as {le}, but {le} should always be specific. In that sense, {le} just represents a special case of {lo}, namely when the referents are desired to be marked as explicitly specific.= {.i mi citka ci le plise pe lo lanka} I'm going to eat three specific apples from the basket. Same problem as before, the apples are not specific, because you used an outer quantifier. This sentence would mean "I will eat three of the apples I have in mind", which helps you very little. {.i mi citka ci lo plise pe lo lanka} I'm going to eat three apples, maybe particular ones, maybe random ones, from the basket. Again, the three apples are explicitly unspecific. Any three apples you eat will make this true. {.i mi citka ci lo ro da poi plise gi'e se lanka ta I'm going to eat three unspecific apples from that basket. Okay. The problem is that even though you call it "specific" in the gloss, the listener has no idea what referents you have in mind. "le" doesn't help you at all to convey to the listener which apples you want. The only way to do that is to either point at them, or describe them otherwise, for instance, you could say "lo plise poi zunle traji" or something, which is much more specific than "le plise pe lo lanka". I elected to use {ci lo ro da poi broda} because simple {.i ci da poi plise gi'e se lanka ta zo'u mi citka da} says that there are exactly three things in the universe that are apples and are in the basket, and that I'm going to eat all three of them. It says there are three things that are apples and are in the basket that you will eat, which is true with or without prenex. mu'o mi'e la selpa'i --=20 pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo ^:i \jl /flr sen |ziu \su xn go kror ^:i \sym tfn /zu viw \xn jy ^jaiw
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