From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Aug 17 08:04:04 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 13:18:03 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 13:17:59 -0400 Message-Id: <199308171717.AA05924@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4722; Tue, 17 Aug 93 13:16:42 EDT Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 8541; Tue, 17 Aug 1993 13:16:42 -0400 Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 12:04:04 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: Less expert opinion X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9308171255.AA12739@relay1.UU.NET> from "Colin Fine" at Aug 17, 93 01:53:49 pm Status: O X-Status: la kolin. cusku di'e > 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. Well, that has problems too: it means "more than one of the (perhaps many) who are us". However, this problem can be cured by preposing an article: le za'u mi the more-than-one-who-are us because in the form LE+quantifier+sumti, the quantifier serves as both inner quantifier for the descriptor and as outer quantifier for the contained sumti; in the former role, it says how many there are. (But "ro lo" might be better than "le" to pin it down.) > 3) le/lo: John has a paper in draft (to go into the textbook), but > I'll try. I wish. That paper is not yet even begun, but we do have some stuff from the textbook, the 10/88 grammar summary (mostly obsolete, but still usable as a mine), and elsewhere. > 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' Almost. Actually it's "ro le su'o remna", >all< of the at-least-one things I am describing as human. When you say "The men came into the room" about a specific group of men, you mean all of them unless you explicitly quantify, so "le" matches English "the" here. > mi klama le zarci > means > I go to at least one of the at-least-one things I am to all of the at-least-one ... > describing as a shop. > but that 'describing' means that the sumti is (almost > certainly) specific. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.