From lojbab Tue Nov 15 10:01:57 1994 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199411151501.AA19596@access2.digex.net> Subject: Re: "re lo'e broda" is semantically bogus Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 10:01:49 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199411120440.AA28421@nfs2.digex.net> from "Jorge Llambias" at Nov 11, 94 08:05:34 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24beta] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1895 Status: RO la xorxes. cusku di'e > The sumti paper says that {su'o lo'e ro} is the default quantifier of {lo'e}. > If it doesn't make sense, I guess it should be fixed. Maybe it should be fixed. What do you propose? > I prefer to think of {lo'e} as the opaque gadri, especially since it seems > that {xe'e} won't be accepted. And maybe {le'e} would be the opaque gadri > with in-mind restrictions. When Santa says that he needs a box, but not any > will do, he has a 'type' of box in mind, but not a particular box. I don't believe that "lo'e" is a generalized opaque gadri (or "le'e" either), because they refer to abstractions, not to real instances. {lo'e tirxe} is neither male nor female, even though all real {tirxe} are either male or female. > So we have {re lo'e remna kakne le nu zutsi le sfofa}, because I'm not > restricting it to any special type of remna, just any two. I would render that as: ro remna remei kakne le nu ... Each human-being pair is able to ... since it is a universal statement about what pairs of persons can do. > But {la santas > nitcu le'e tanxe}, because he needs a certain type of box, not any old box > whatsoever. I render this as: la santas. nitcu tu'a lo tanxe sa'enai la santas. nitcu le nu da poi tanxe sa'enai zo'u da co'e Santa requires the event-of (there-exists-X which is-a-box (loosely) such-that X has-some-property) where "sa'enai" tells us that although the referent of "da" is unquestionably a "tanxe", there are unexpressed restrictions. Note that in Lojban "looseness" can move either toward extension (the box isn't really a box) or toward restriction (the box is a special unmentioned type of box). If you don't like this use of "sa'enai", you can say: la santas. nitcu tu'a lo co'e tanxe Santa needs the obvious kind of box. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.