From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199411102310.AA19698@access2.digex.net> Subject: "ro" doesn't imply +specific Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 18:10:25 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24beta] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1344 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 10 18:10:43 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab Jorge seems to think that anything quantified "ro" is specific, and that if this rule doesn't hold, we can't get any +specific sumti at all. I believe he has a hold of the right stick at the wrong end: everything which is +specific is quantified "ro", but not vice versa. The claim "All rats have kidneys" is not +specific with respect to "all rats", but -specific; it translates as "ro ratcu" or "ro lo ratcu" or "ro da poi ratcu ku'o". We do not take the speaker's intent as authority for the meaning of "ro ratcu"; we go to the current universe of discourse and quantify over the set of all rats. Such universal quantifications over finite sets can be +definite or -definite: the 50 (not 51, And) states of the US can be +definite, but hardly the zillion real-world rats; nobody even knows how many there are, never mind knowing each rat in particular (urgh). For this and related reasons, I remain skeptical about the utility of a +definite/-definite marker in Lojban; if it existed, it would surely be a discursive. Apropos counting {jecta}: most USAnians don't know how many provinces Canada has, and I vaguely recall that England (not the U.K.) has 56 counties, but I'm very prepared to be told I'm wrong. So 51 states isn't that bad. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.