From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Aug 17 14:53:49 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 08:55:10 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 08:55:05 -0400 Message-Id: <199308171255.AA02048@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3299; Tue, 17 Aug 93 08:53:48 EDT Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 1793; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 08:53:47 -0400 Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 13:53:49 +0100 Reply-To: Colin Fine Sender: Lojban list From: Colin Fine Subject: Re: Less expert opinion To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: Thanks for the answer, Matthew. Perhaps I was worrying unnecessarily (but I know it takes me significantly longer to read most postings in Lojban, so ...) To turn to your questions: 1) 'mi' is ambiguous there (and my English reflexes made me read it as 'me'. I suggest 'mi poi norcertu' - which is still strictly ambiguous, but pragmatically suggests that 'mi' is not singular, as the restrictive clause would be pointless then. Nick once used 'mi pe va' for a plural, but I don't think it works too well. I've just thought of another possibility (ki'e .and): 'za'u mi' = more than one of me/us. So to disambiguate your text: di'u preti fi la kolin. fain. mi poi norcertu .i mi po'u la matius. spuda la'edi'u zoi gliban. though it's a bit long-winded 2) I don't recognise fi'avla (fiction word). I guess you have misremembered fu'ivla (copy word). I (and others) objected to le'avla, first because it means 'taker word' (should be selyle'avla) and second because lebna is about taking, seizing, obtaining, which I did not think appropriate for the meaning. I suggested fu'ivla (not ideal, but the best I could come up with) and others have picked it up. I am sure that le'avla will continue to be used, in that meaning, by the weight of history; but I shall used fu'ivla (when I remember zo'o) 3) le/lo: John has a paper in draft (to go into the textbook), but I'll try. The fundamental distinction between 'lo' and 'le' is indeed veridicalness. But because of this, and their default quantification, there is also a difference in specificity. lo remna is elliptic for su'o lo ro remna 'at least one of all humans' le remna is elliptic for su'o le su'o remna 'at least one of the at-least-one things I am describing as human' Therefore, the 'le' form is specific, the 'lo' form is not. mi klama le zarci means I go to at least one of the at-least-one things I am describing as a shop. but that 'describing' means that the sumti is (almost certainly) specific. mi klama lo zarci means I go to at least one of (all) the things which really are shops which does not convey specificity (though it does not rule out the possibility of you having a specific example in mind). For this reason, 'le' often translates 'the' and 'lo' often translates 'a' or 'some'. However, in my opinion, some writers use this last equivalence unthinkingly, when they write mi klama lo zarci to translate I went to a shop. As I have said elsewhere, that is not wrong - it has the required truth value. But it (in my view oddly) fails to convey specificity when the circumstances imply it, and is therefore highly marked. In fact, now I think about it, I would be inclined to take that 'lo' as implying that the event has not yet taken place, but is future or potential. This is a pragmatic implicature, not a logical implication, and could be overturned by context, for example: le verba cusku lu mi ca zvati le mivdalmuzga li'u .i le drata verba cusku lu ko na bebna .i ti na'e mivdalmuzga .iku'i mi lamprujeftu vitke lo mivdalmuzga lu "One child says 'I'm at the zoo.' Another says 'Don't be silly, this isn't a zoo. But last week I went to the zoo (really)'" Where the 'lo' in context takes its primary meaning of veridicality. I don't know if such an exchange would ever happen - coming from English I would probably want a selbri in there - to'erxanri or something. But perhaps native se jbobau will use such forms! Colin