On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:

An addition: the way I see it, there's a few levels of "universes&= quot;:
The full linguistic universe. In the case of Lojban this universe= is uselessly enormous, since we work with events as objects and so on. It = contains parallel universes, events that never happen, people that will nev= er be born, etc. I agree that putting {da} here is useless; in fact it prob= ably makes {da broda} vacuous for any non-contradictory {broda}.

^^ This is what seems to me be the "universe of = discourse", and why I think anything that currently operates within th= at field should instead operate within the of context, where it would be mu= ch less useless.
=A0

The "anything that might come up" universe. I think {da} should b= e somewhere around here, albeit probably slightly smaller than this. Basica= lly, if you say {ro da broda}, and something comes up in conversation that = doesn't broda, you spoke falsely. (I wouldn't say you "lied&qu= ot;, because you might not have thought of that thing as being able to come= up.) But the fact that I can make up a universe where something doesn'= t broda doesn't automatically mean you spoke falsely, in this model. The "anything relevant" universe. This is tremendously smaller th= an both of the preceding. It means pretty much what you'd think, though= it is worthy of comparison with the following.

^^ My "universe" is determined by context, which I would consider= as both of the above two, sort of.
=A0

The "some specific-ish relevant thing" "universe". This= is not actually a universe, but rather my way of distinguishing between {d= a} and {zo'e} in the previous universe. While {ro da} there is everythi= ng relevant, {ro zo'e} could be just one thing, because it is allowed t= o be more concrete (in particular, it can have referents) than just "s= omething in the universe" (which can't).

Honestly, I don't understand any of that, so I'll just ign= ore it.
=A0

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

On= Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com= > wrote:

The problem with this is that we don't h= ave mechanisms for explicitly handling the universe of discourse. Anything = you talk about is automatically bound within the hidden variable "the = universe of discourse", and you can only indirectly influence what is = in this domain. "Everything that has ever been at any location in the = universe at any point in time" is implicitly "Everything that ...= and is also in the universe of discourse" by default.

Another example of this is the approach to what outer quantifiers shoul= d mean. Assuming we've come to some agreement on what the universe of d= iscourse is for the moment, should {ci da} mean "exactly three things&= quot; as the CLL proclaims? The way I understand what you're saying, yo= u would think that it shouldn't, and instead there should be another PA= for "exactly", and without that addition {ci da} should be somet= hing like "at least three, and probably not tremendously larger than t= hree". At least as an outer quantifier; in {lo cacra be li ci} it woul= d be more like "close to three, possibly with some error on either sid= e". Am I right here?

My problem with making the "verbosity and precision correlate tigh= tly" doctrine into law is that precise statements all vanish for being= too verbose. It's like pedantic English, you can be very careful in En= glish if you try really hard, but we don't speak that way, and those th= at try are criticized for sounding awkward.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail= .com> wrote:

(In the event that my comments below spark a= discussion, I've moved this to the main list and altered the subject t= o reflect the topic at hand.)

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:34 AM, Ian Johnson = <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:

This drastically hinders the precision (in f= act it basically makes it exactly the same as PA lo GISMU), but yes, PA GIS= MU under this model is an extremely compact form for a rather uncommon usag= e.

But fair enough; at the very least the {pa se pelkre} version is sketch= y, and we'll leave it at that.

I'm a firm beli= ever in determinism via context and precision via verbosity. That is, I bel= ieve that anything about an expression that can be figured out from the con= text that expression is in, should be left to context, and that a more prec= ise expression should always, without exception, require more words to expr= ess than a similar, less precise one.

My reasoning behind both is simply that following those doctrines means= we can say things in Lojban more succintly, a definite boon considering th= e wordiness the language has, IMO.

And it's not at all difficult= to add {roroi fe'eroroi} to make the context be "always and every= where". It does, obviously, require more words, but that's in line= with the above.
=A0
mi'e la latro'a mu'= ;o

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com>= wrote:

On T= hu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com&g= t; wrote:

The first version is wrong; that says "there exists exactly one yellow= haired thing which ..." (Rather, there is a very slightly less contro= versial version that I tend to subscribe to: "there is exactly one yel= low-haired thing that is at all possible to come up in discussion which ...= " The point is that the default universe of discourse should be the universe of discourse, there shouldn't be anything that be reasona= bly anticipated to come up in conversation that isn't actually in it.) =

I subscribe to the idea that the "universe= of discourse" is bound by the context that discourse is in, mainly be= cause forcing PA GISMU to mean that there is exactly PA things that GISMU m= akes the construct pretty much useless, seeing as statements like that are = pretty much always incorrect. But this isn't the list to talk about the= e issues, being the beginner's thread and all.
=A0
If you use su'o instead it's not terrible, but really {da} construc= ts when you don't want nice sharp precision tend to be undesirable, in = my experience.

At any rate, here I'd probably say {lo se ke pel= xu kerfa}. {le} might also be appropriate in this context, but I doubt I= 9;d use it. That said, I think more likely the structure of the discussion = would be different among fluent in-real-life Lojban speakers. (Few of these= exist; I, for example, am pretty quick on IRC, but am almost completely he= lpless when it comes to spatial things.) I'd expect a lot of up-front e= stablishment of pronouns, for example.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Jonathan Jones <= eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 10:01 AM, neizyn. <<= a href=3D"mailto:sjacket@gmail.com" target=3D"_blank">sjacket@gmail.com= > wrote:

coi
.i mi'e neizyn.
=A0
Sorry, I'= ;m just a beginnger! but I was wondering about a special situation.
Suppose there's a group of girls with one guy; I'm talking to on= e of the girls, and I make a statement referring to the guy without unambig= uously referring to him by name or other reference. This is because he'= s the only person in the group like that. Say he's blonde. Is there a w= ay=A0I can say that "someone is blond" oooooor 'blonde exists= /obtains such that x is blonde' ? Better yet, could I use that with som= e kind of reference?=A0

{pa pelxre} =3D=3D {pa da poi pelkre} =3D> &= quot;one X which-is golden-haired"
{pa lo prenu poi pelxre} =3D>= "A singular person which-is blonde"
{lo pelxre prenu} =3D>= "One or more blonde type-of person"
{ko'a goi (any of the above)} =3D> "It-1, which-is what we will= call {any of the above)"

I'm sure there's other ways t= o do it as well, but those are the most obvious, to me at any rate.

--
mu'o mi= 9;e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk.= mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D = )

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo piln= o be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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