From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jun 01 15:30:41 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:30:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FlvgN-00026k-NQ for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:30:23 -0700 Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.171]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FlvgM-00026d-7m for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:30:23 -0700 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id j40so264409ugd for ; Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:30:20 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=OYKoR6woIYyq5xbLb6TkwH/qnV1tQlZPX9v3j5xLCDod3DJnl1t8ZvnqPQnfv6ZbWBT9bcsnI3JsGS+E/+MPtHCi8vWbk64h9gdY3agHJQB8sMIAerHOXwH+YMLSsCRQlmWyvyzlnzrP+wCDMdyC2+yQMkVTO//2qOLxGADQBUk= Received: by 10.67.100.17 with SMTP id c17mr194859ugm; Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:30:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.66.255.6 with HTTP; Thu, 1 Jun 2006 15:30:20 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 16:30:20 -0600 From: "Maxim Katcharov" To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all} In-Reply-To: <925d17560606010658xf47ef5t42fd427c4d5cfbb9@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <925d17560605160731j379ecfdbo42862a88433e112c@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605291805y7f216d65v33b13eb6741ffda6@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605300707y79d20b95nd621ac89c5e17215@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605310741g384f22b1k5b91aba8173006cd@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605311649w51e71fc5r26c9b71da03e94f3@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560606010658xf47ef5t42fd427c4d5cfbb9@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -1.7 (-) X-archive-position: 11705 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: maxim.katcharov@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On 6/1/06, Jorge Llambías wrote: > On 5/31/06, Maxim Katcharov wrote: > > > > Does each student perform part of the surroundment of the building? > > No: looking at it this way was demonstrated useless. > > Actually, when the students surround the buiding, each student does > perform part of the surrounding of the building. But the converse is not > necessarily true. > > It could be, for example, that the students and the professors surround > the building together. So there is a surrounding of the building taking > place, and each student does take part in it, but the students by > themselves don't surround the building. > > > "The students" can refer to a mass, or a set - is there anything else? > > Nothing that has been demonstrated. > > There are also the students themselves. I should make clear that the "set" that I'm talking about is simply what you'd call more than one student. I can't think of a less ambiguous word. "The students themselves" is a set - there are no implications of an object. > > > If "the students" does not refer to each student, then it must refer > > to a mass of them. > > In a singularist scheme, you are absolutely correct. In a pluralist scheme, > variables can refer to many things at once, so "the students" can refer > to many students at once. Right. In the pluralist scheme, "the animal" can refer to both "the cats" (who are running) and "the dog" (who is white). {lo danlu cu bajra gi'e blabi} - except restricted to "things" and "masses composed of the things" being interchangeable, but that still suffers from the very same problem as the white dog example: you're switching referents halfway through a sentence. > > > "20 students" can be a set of 20 students. > > ("20 students" is an expression, it can't be a set.) > "20 students" can refer to 20 students. Yes, "the members of a set", which I'm referring to as "set". > It could also refer to a set (in the > everyday sense of "set") of 20 students. The everyday sense of "set" is little more than "group". > In this sense "set", "mass" or > "group" are interchangeable. I don't see how that follows. > > > Ok, a set of students. I'm not talking about some special metaphysical > > set, it's just that if I have two pencils in my hand, we call that "a > > set of two pencils". > > Suppose I have a set of 6 color pencils, each of a different color. > The set/group/mass of pencils is multicolor. Each pencil is one color. > I don't think introducing an eighth entity, on top of the six pencils and > the mass of them, will help clarify anything. As I've defined: I'm not talking about some special metaphysical set, it's just that if I have two pencils in my hand, I call that "a set of two pencils". Alternatively, "two pencils". The set of pencils isn't "multicolor", it's just "each is a pencil". > > > > le vitke cu pamei tolcliva > > > The guests arrived singly. > > > > > > le vitke cu romei tolcliva > > > The guests arrived "all-ly" (all together). > > > > > > le vitke cu remei tolcliva > > > The guests arrived in pairs. > > > > > > You could easily do the first two with your method, but the third one > > > would be more complicated. > > > > pair typeof arrival? No, I see no problem. You'd say it exactly as you > > said it there: > > > > {ro lo vitke cu remei tolcliva} > > all the guests pair-ishly arrived. > > Yes, that wasn't a very perspicuous example, because when a pair > arrives, each member of the pair also arrives, so you can do that with > your method, you're right. Before I change the example to a better one, > however, this raises an interesting question. Suppose three guests arrive The problem that you're about to pose is as much (perhaps even more of) an issue in your pluralist view. > together and you see them enter the house together. We could say: > > lei ci vitke cu klama le zdani > The three guests went into the house together. Alright, perhaps they were so drunk that they had to lean on each other, and only through communal effort managed to topple into the house. (Otherwise they didn't do it together, though they did do it at the same time: "concurrently".) Though I wouldn't usually see people going in as that sort of mass, even if they were drunk, so I would seldom say {lei ci vitke...} in the first place. > > Now someone asks you: > > xo klama be le zdani cu se viska do > How many goers-into-the-house did you see? Note that this question is a bit off. Usually one would ask "how many guests came in?" and not "how many acts of going in did you see?" > > Your answer is: > > (A) One. (The mass of three guests.) Yes, if I saw them go in in that form, I'd say something like "Goers in? Well, three. First Alice and Bryce, and then a drunken heap of Carol, David, and Eliza toppled in." I'd offer the explanation because I'm not a twit, and I'd know that what's really being asked of me is "how many people increased the number of people in the house by coming in via this door?". > (B) Three. (The three guests.) Yes, this would usually be my answer, since I'd seldom see people going in "together"-as-in-{loi} in the first place. > (C) Four. (The three guests and the mass of three guests.) If I saw them come in as a mass, I wouldn't think that they came in individually, and vice-versa. > (D) Seven. (The three guests, the mass of three guests, and the > three masses of two guests.) *Potentially* there are 7 different goers-in, yes. Note what I wrote for (C) > (E) Far too many to count (all the visible organs that compose the > guests, and their corresponding masses.) No, none of the organs themselves entered the house, just as none of the students themselves surround the building. > (F) None of the above. > > > Now, to change the example to something not distributable: > > le nanmu cu pamei bevri le pipno > The men carried the piano singly. > > le nanmu cu romei bevri le pipno > The men carried the piano "all-ly" (all together). > > le nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno > The men carried the piano in pairs > > You could easily do the first two with your method, but the third one > would be more complicated. There's still no problem. And I think that you want {loi}: {loi nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno} "the mass of men pairishly carried the piano" / "together the men pairishly carried the piano" This is not a problem because tanru have no fixed meaning. "Pairishly carried" could mean that the mass was a pair. You'll find that being explicit ("each of set A is in a group/mass with only one other of set A such that that group lifts a piano") is just as verbose in your method. You should just use the abstractor {su'u} to accomplish this vague "something to do with these students (i.e. groups of them)" thing that you'd like {lo} to do. > > > > > > They are all covered by "the students surrounded the pole". > > > > > > > > Ok, now tell me which one is the pluralist view. > > > > > > The pluralist view is that "the students surrounded the pole" covers > > > them all. > > > > I see. So, in your pluralist view, you could say ... > > > > "the students [The students surrounded the pole one at a time.] and > > [surrounded the pole in groups of three]" > > > > right? > > There must be a typo there somewhere, but I can't tell what you meant. > > >It's exactly so in my view, you just have to move some things > > into the proper places: > > > > "[individually the students surrounded the pole] and [groups of three > > students surrounded the pole]" > > Right, with the singularist view you have to repeat "the students". > > > This really brings us back to the building example: > > > > "the students surround the building and wear hats" > > > > Let's break this up: > > > > 13.1 "the students surround the building" > > 13.2 "the students wear hats" > > > > In (1), what is the referent? "A surrounder of the building": "a mass > > formed of students". > > Neither. "The students" does not have a single referent, it has many > referents, namely student A, student B, student C, ... and student Z. No. The students do not surround the building individually, therefore there are not 26 referents. There is only one "surrounder of the building", and therefore there is only one referent. In this case, you're treating "the students" as a mass that surrounds the building. It doesn't matter that "the students" can potentially refer to either a mass or some individuals (a set) in your view. {lo danlu} can potentially refer to a white dog or some running (we'll say black) cats that we see on this street. But when you say {lo danlu cu blabi}, the referent *is* clearly not the running cats. > > > In (2), what is the referent? "Wearers of hats": "each student individually". > > The same as before, the referring expression "the students" does not take > one value at a time. That's a job left to the predicate, "... wear hats". > > > The two referents are not the same. You can't pretend that they're the > > same for the sake of translating > > > > "the students surround the building and wear hats" > > > > verbatim into Lojban. > > In the pluralist version, it makes no sense of talking about the two referents, > because there are fifty referents involved, not two. > I should have said "two types of referents". One of them is the 50 students (that wear hats), one of them is the mass of 50 students (that surrounds the building). To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.