From: cbmvax!uunet!math.ucla.edu!jimc
Message-Id: <9104251627.AA07288@julia.math.ucla.edu>
To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
Subject: Re: Veridical and Masses (was Nick tries valiantly...)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 23 Apr 91 13:51:59 EDT."
             <m0jVRX1-0000ltC@snark.thyrsus.com> 
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 91 09:26:52 -0700
Status: RO

> Date:  Tue, 23 Apr 91 13:51:59 EDT
> To:  lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
> From:  cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan)
> Subject:  Re: Nick tries valiantly to save face (His first sentence)
   
> In the second sentence, I am making an assertion about something which I
> assert to be a bear.  You probably haven't heard anything about this bear
> before.  So I call it "lo cribe".  I could also say "da poi cribe" = "some
> x1 such-that [it] is-a-bear"; the only difference between "lo" and "da poi"
> is that "lo" is meaningful even if no bears exist.

This is the aspect of "veridical" that puzzles me: why is "lo cribe" different from
"da poi cribe"?  With "da noi cribe" I make a supplementary assertion
"something (which
by the way is a bear, so I say)".   Whereas, with "da poi cribe" the referent set of
the sumti (before implicit quantification to "at least one") is restricted from 
"everything" to only those everythings that actually are bears.  Then
it is run through
the bridi with the other arguments.  If no N-tuples of thus-related
referent set members
survive (the first of each is one of the alleged bears) then with the existential
quantification the assertion ends up false.  Isn't this just what "lo
cribe" does -- not
approximately but exactly, so that "lo cribe" should be considered an
abbreviation for
"da poi cribe"?

And in particular, with poi or lo (not noi), where am I making any
implicit assertion
that any sumti arguments exist in reality?  The main sentence (or with noi) is the
relation that I intend to be conveyed to the listener, and if it pertains to zero
referents it is false or useless; that's the breaks.  Internal phrases (lacking noi)
are merely intermediate results with no independent significance.  It's useful to
consider why a sentence ended up false, but such considerations don't
make up the core
of the meaning of the sentence.  

> It is the function of the mass articles ("lai", "lei", "loi") to refer
> to the individuals aggregated together, and of the set articles
> ("la'i", "le'i", "lo'i") to refer to the sets composed of the individuals.
> If you say "The letters of the alphabet are of Roman origin", you can say
> "le lerfu", because it is true of each of them.  If you say "The letters
> of the alphabet are ultimately of Phoenician origin", you must use "lei"
> because it is true only of the letters considered >en masse<; some are not
> of Phoenician origin but were invented later.  If you say "The letters of
> the alphabet number 26", you must use "le'i", because no single letter
> "numbers 26", whatever that would mean.

For me, "mass" has been even more slippery than "veridical sumti".  When the team
(mass) carries the log, I have a lot of trouble to distinguish this from how the
set carries the log.  OK, a set has no arms, but neither does a team,
only the members
of the (team, set) have arms.  Similarly, in a sports team each member has a
different job, but equally in a traditional set such as the ring of integers, 
particular members like 0 and 1 have specialized roles. 

In short, I don't see much need to distinguish between sets and masses.  

		-- jimc