From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jun 16 06:00:44 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:00:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1Dityx-0005zv-6V for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:00:31 -0700 Received: from web81306.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.81]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Dityq-0005zd-OK for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:00:30 -0700 Received: (qmail 93809 invoked by uid 60001); 16 Jun 2005 13:00:23 -0000 Message-ID: <20050616130023.93807.qmail@web81306.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [65.69.50.91] by web81306.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:00:23 PDT Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:00:23 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: Again {xorlo} and Wiki. To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <20050616112557.80189.qmail@web33410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 10182 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --- Opi Lauma wrote: > Hi, > > on the Lojban-Wiki I have found the following: > A side effect of the above is that in > xorlo, if > you mean "one bear", consider actually saying > "pa > cribe". It's ever so much more specific. xorxes > points > out that to refer to one bear, "lo pa cribe" is > actually a bit better; "pa cribe cu broda" > means that > exactly one cribe in the whole world brodas, > which is > often not what you want. We (those of us that > have > actually been using xorlo for the last few > months; > there are at least half a dozen active users on > #lojban now) have found that context is almost > always > sufficient, however. > > And it is opposite to what I understood from > answers > on one of the my previous postings: > {pa cribe} = {pa lo cribe} = “an bear”. > > and opposite to what I understood from lessons > of Nick > Nicholas: > {lo pa cribe} means that there exists > only one > bear in the world. > > Where is true? Lojban is evolving, sometimes rapidly. Nick's claim about {lo pa cribe} goes back to the days when {lo cribe} was {lo ro cribe}, all the bears in the world and internal quantifiers gave the cardinal of the related set. That has not been the case for quite a while. It passed through the stage where {lo cribe} was some unspecified bunch of bears and the internal quantifier, if any, was the cardinal of that bunch (compare {le cribe} for a specified bunch). In xorlo, {lo cribe} is bears, unspecified in every possible way including number (indeed, unspecifiable without changing the sumti) and {lo pa cribe} is an uspecified bunch of unit bunches of bears (typically by context a single such, I think -- but context is so tricky that "typical" may not be meaningful). The situation with external quantifiers is also in some flux. In CLL and the intermediate stage, {pa (lo) cribe} meant (exactly) one out of the (unspecified) bunch of bears, which might or might not be the same as (exactly) one out of all the bears in the world (well,it pretty clearly did in CLL). In xorlo, {pa lo cribe} still means "one out of the referent of {lo cribe}" but that referent is now (albeit indirectly) definitely at least all the bears in the world, so {pa lo cribe} amounts to (thouhg by a differnt route) {pa da poi cribe}, as it did in CLL. Note this is different from {lo pa cribe}, which allows that more than one bear does whatever pa lo cribe does though still gets translated as/ translates "a/one bear." In this case, xorlo returns to CLL, but loses a distinction (probably relatively minor) that the intermediate position had).