On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 11:26 AM, la gleki <glek= i.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, January 28, 2013 8:23:39 PM UTC+4, clifford wrote:

Well, I think what we seriously need is some logic lessons. <= br>=A0

How do you imagine children bor= n by parents speaking Lojban taking logic lessons?

<= br>Language designers and language users need different qualifications, doi la gleki. na'e well designed languages can still be usable (after all,= =20 most natural languages fall into this category), but we want to do=20 better than just passable solutions.

And I could give thr= ee responses to the question, all correct:

- Not at all; = they will pick it up from their parents' usage of the language; {lo} me= ans this, {le} means this, and they are misunderstood when they misuse them= .

- The same way many nat lang speakers should and do: in clas= ses, in discussions, and with exercises.

- We don't c= are. It's not the time to focus on how people will eventually speak, le= arn, or teach the language.

Give examp= les from real life and you are done.

=
=A0
I= don't=20 think that all the problems have been solved (and for some I don't see= =20 how to solve them in Lojban)

<= /div>
Do you know how to solve them somewhere? In xorban/tokipona/Navah= o/language of penguins?

=A0
, but things are not nearly as muddled as=20 some people persist in claiming.=A0 that being said, a number of examples= =20 would be helpful to make the points already established clear and=20 forceful to all.

From: la gleki <gle= ki.is.my.name@gmail.com>

Subject:

On Monday, January 28, 2013 7:24:39 PM UTC+4, clifford wrote:

Yes, let's do get this away from Aesop (does anyone remember what the=20 connection was?) and stick to meddlesome quantifiers and operators.<= /div>
To start.=A0 1) "any" is fairly peculiar to English=A0 (and related= languages) but it seems that all its logical roles are related to scope issues,=20 whether the scope at variance with the quantifier's, conditional or=20 imperative or intensional.=A0 Lojban doesn't do the scopes other than t= he=20 propositional ones well (hardly at all), so we are left to context or jury-rigging: how do we=20 indicate that the "an apple" is best scoped as within, rather tha= n=20 outside the command (and the underlying intensional bit about what would happen were I to get an apple or were my request to be acted upon positively)?=A0 Tossing {tu'a}s around, while justifiable, seems= =20 inelegant at best.
2.=A0 Yes, {le} makes purely denotative terms (God, how that phrase brings=20 back seminars and symposia of old).=A0 It is pragmatically urged that the= =20 predicate involved be somehow connected to the object in the view of the other participants than the speaker but that is not strictly required.=A0 a le phrase points to a particular definite (or is it specific?) thing=20 (in the xorlo sense) and just that, so that thing must be in UD, but is=20 otherwise not restricted.
3.=A0 As I have said, the main feature of {lo} is salience.=A0 A lo phrase=20 refers to the things with the indicated property that currently are of=20 interest -- including bringing them to our attention as one possible=20 way.=A0 What things is quite open to contextual determination: {lo broda}= =20 may, depending on context, refer to the physical mass of all brodas, or=20 the class of them or some subclass or or broda alone or various chunks=20 of one or several brodas taken separately or en masse.=A0 There are=20 various auxiliary devices (not all well-developed) for disambiguating if context doesn't work.
4 Neither {le} nor {lo} correlate in any regular way to English "the&qu= ot; or=20 "a", though, because of salience, repeated {lo broda} comes to be "the" regularly.=A0
= 5.=A0 But {lo} is always bad for "any" because salience -- or any= specifying factor -- is just what "any" does not have.

My suggestion is = that we create a list of many many examples and each lojbanist is given opp= ortunity to translate them.
Otherwise this problem will never be solved. Probably people here don't=20 understand what all those terms like "specific" or =A0"salie= nce" or other=20 terms. vau zo'onai
Yes, seriously =A0i dont remember when i= =20 started that thread on "any". Long ago. No solution that has been= =20 approved by at least 90% of lojbanists.
The same questions and an= swers arise again and again.
We need a huge list of examples.
mu'o

From: la gleki <gle= ki.is...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2= 013 8:04 AM
Subject: Re:= [lojban] Re: Aesop's "The Wolf and the Crane"

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 manner analogous=20 to "a" and "the", for back-referencing, is bad. I'm= just not sure how=20 many of you will agree with the CLL. (Also, I can't be bothered to look= =20 it up.)

{lo} *can* refer to things in context, and have definite=20 referents. It's the *generic* article in the sense that we *don't k= now*=20 if it's being definite or indefinite. The definite-indefinite=20 distinction seems to slowly be dying in IRC Lojban, which is -- I'd=20 wager -- where the majority of "spoken" Lojban happens. If there = is such a thing as conversational Lojban, it's on IRC.

As for the "any" discussion, I'm slowly beginning to see the merits of sisku2 as a=20 property. If we use a simple article plus a selbri, we invoke {zo'e} an= d somewhere, there are definite referents that appear. {.i mi sisku lo=20 plise} has the awful problem of having semi-definite referents=20 (quantifierless {lo} doesn't actually need to for strange xorlo=20 reasons). However, assuming xorlo strangeness doesn't happen, the forma= l definition says we can plug in {zo'e noi ke'a plise} (the formal= =20 definition should change, IMVHO, to reflect the fact that {lo} can be=20 quite bullshit-y.) -> {.i mi sisku zo'e noi ke'a plise}. Here= 9;s the=20 proof that actual referents appear. {zo'e} has referents. Now, if any= =20 apple will do, there *shouldn't* be referents. Now, maybe it's poss= ible=20 to hack our way around this with {da}-magics, but it seems like invoking the property that is being searched 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= =20 that might suggest that using properties can most of the time / always=20 work. I think however that exploring this possibility is worthwhile,=20 unless we all get our facts straight about xorlo. (As it is, everyone=20 has their own interpretation. Please don't say otherwise. In fact, I=20 used to think I knew what I was talking about when I said "xorlo"= , but I realise that I don't. I used to think I agreed with certain people=20 about xorlo, but I realise that I don't.)

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

= P.S.=20 if this is going to degenerate into a full-blown discussion about=20 articles and scopes and everything awful in the world, shouldn't we mak= e a new topic?

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

"Any"= ; and {ro}=A0https://groups.google. com= /d/topic/lojban/yh8- ChFLanM/discussion

Other similar topics:

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

Discussion of {da}=A0https://groups.g= oogle. com/forum/#!topic/lojban/R1- Bi8p_xmg

Quantifier exactness=A0= https://groups. google.com/forum/#!topic/ = lojban/cJHKEf8kE3Q

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