To start. 1) "any" is fairly peculiar to English (a= nd related languages) but it seems that all its logical roles are related t= o scope issues, whether the scope at variance with the quantifier's, condit= ional or imperative or intensional. Lojban doesn't do the scopes othe= r than the propositional ones well (hardly at all), so we are left to conte= xt or jury-rigging: how do we indicate that the "an apple" is best scoped a= s within, rather than outside the command (and the underlying intensional b= it about what would happen were I to get an apple or were my request to be acted up= on positively)? Tossing {tu'a}s around, while justifiable, seems inel= egant at best.

2. Yes, {le} makes purely denotative terms = (God, how that phrase brings back seminars and symposia of old). It i= s pragmatically urged that the predicate involved be somehow connected to t= he object in the view of the other participants than the speaker but that i= s not strictly required. a le phrase points to a particular definite = (or is it specific?) thing (in the xorlo sense) and just that, so that thin= g must be in UD, but is otherwise not restricted.

3. As I = have said, the main feature of {lo} is salience. A lo phrase refers t= o the things with the indicated property that currently are of interest -- = including bringing them to our attention as one possible way. What th= ings is quite open to contextual determination: {lo broda} may, depending o= n context, refer to the physical mass of all brodas, or the class of them o= r some subclass or or broda alone or various chunks of one or several broda= s taken separately or en masse. There are various auxiliary devices (= not all well-developed) for disambiguating if context doesn't work.<= /div>

4 Neither {le} nor {lo} correlate in any regular way to English "the" o= r "a", though, because of salience, repeated {lo broda} comes to be "the" r= egularly.

5. But {lo} is always bad for "any" because salience= -- or any specifying factor -- is just what "any" does not have.

My suggestion is that w= e create a list of many many examples and each lojbanist is given opportuni= ty to translate them.

Otherwise this problem will never be solved= . Probably people here don't understand what all those terms like "specific= " or "salience" or other terms. vau zo'onai

Yes, seriously = i dont remember when i started that thread on "any". Long ago. No sol= ution that has been approved by at least 90% of lojbanists.

The s= ame questions and answers arise again and again.

We need a huge l= ist of examples.

mu'o

Fro= m: la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com<= /a>
Sent: Monday, Janua= ry 28, 2013 8:04 AM
Subject:= Re: [lojban] Re: Aesop's "The Wolf and the Crane"

<= br>

On Monday, January 28, 2013 5:53:47 PM UTC+4, tsani wrote:FWIW, I recall the CLL mentioning that using lo and le in a m= anner analogous to "a" and "the", for back-referencing, is bad. I'm just no= t sure how many of you will agree with the CLL. (Also, I can't be bothered = to look it up.)

{lo} *can* refer to things in context, and have definite ref= erents. It's the *generic* article in the sense that we *don't know* if it'= s being definite or indefinite. The definite-indefinite distinction seems t= o slowly be dying in IRC Lojban, which is -- I'd wager -- where the majorit= y of "spoken" Lojban happens. If there is such a thing as conversational Lo= jban, it's on IRC.

As for the "any" discussion, I'm slowly beginning to se= e the merits of sisku2 as a property. If we use a simple article plus a sel= bri, we invoke {zo'e} and somewhere, there are definite referents that appe= ar. {.i mi sisku lo plise} has the awful problem of having semi-definite re= ferents (quantifierless {lo} doesn't actually need to for strange xorlo rea= sons). However, assuming xorlo strangeness doesn't happen, the formal defin= ition says we can plug in {zo'e noi ke'a plise} (the formal definition shou= ld change, IMVHO, to reflect the fact that {lo} can be quite bullshit-y.) -= > {.i mi sisku zo'e noi ke'a plise}. Here's the proof that actual refere= nts appear. {zo'e} has referents. Now, if any apple will do, there *shouldn= 't* be referents. Now, maybe it's possible to hack our way around this with= {da}-magics, but it seems like invoking the property that is being searche= d for is a more succinct solution, as -- and here's the important part -- *any* object satisfying that predicate will work.

I haven't really analysed this to a greater degree that= might suggest that using properties can most of the time / always work. I = think however that exploring this possibility is worthwhile, unless we all = get our facts straight about xorlo. (As it is, everyone has their own inter= pretation. Please don't say otherwise. In fact, I used to think I knew what= I was talking about when I said "xorlo", but I realise that I don't. I use= d to think I agreed with certain people about xorlo, but I realise that I d= on't.)

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

P.S. if = this is going to degenerate into a full-blown discussion about articles and= scopes and everything awful in the world, shouldn't we make a new topic?

Yes, let's close the topic and cont= inue where we left last time.

"Any" and {ro} https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lojban/yh8-ChFLanM/discus= sion

Other similar topics:

<= div>Discussion of {da} https://groups.google.com/forum/#= !topic/lojban/wtp1pNm8Nvc

Discussion of {da} https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/R1-Bi8p_xm= g

Quantifier exactness https://groups.= google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/cJHKEf8kE3Q

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