From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199412021858.AA02931@access2.digex.net> Subject: Re: Some thoughts on Lojban gadri Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 13:58:20 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199412020629.AA17622@access3.digex.net> from "Logical Language Group" at Dec 2, 94 01:29:47 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24beta] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2506 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 2 13:58:36 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab mi pu cusku di'e > > But if so, then the quantifier "piro" proposed by Jorge for "lei" won't > > work in the way we expect. "lei re prenu", viz. "la alis. joi la djordj." > > has four legs, and the notion that if Alice is small and George is big, > > then the mass is both small and big, breaks down. Alice-joi-George would > > have to be compared to other masses-of-two-persons, not to individual > > properties of individual persons. la lojbab. cusku di'e > I thought I was the one that proposed this - a long time ago. The 10/88 cmavo list says "pisu'o lei ro"; my sumti paper assumes "pisu'o lei su'o", since the 10/88 context makes clear that the inner quantifier is supposed to be "all of those I put into the mass", but inner quantifiers (really cardinal numbers, as pc says) refer to the class upon which we are drawing to make the in-mind selection. But "pisu'o" has always been the outside quantifier for lai/lei/loi. Jorge proposed "piro" for lei (and presumably also lai), making claims about in-mind masses implicitly claims about the whole mass, on predicate-logic grounds. I believe those grounds are incorrect (see one of my postings from yesterday), because outside quantifiers on masses are not truly quantifiers in the sense of predicate logic. > The archetype > of lei is the two men carrying a log (together) across the field, in which > case you WANT the default quantifier to be the entire mass rather than a > portion. Do you? What if one hauls and the other supervises? I would consider that a legitimate example of a mass property, just as the nose of the hauler doesn't really participate in hauling, but belongs to the hauler-mass just the same. In such a case, it is only part of {lei re nanmu} that hauls. > On the other hand, I gues the "Relevant portion for context" could > suffice here too - the smallest relevant portion just happens to be "all". > But this seems to be stretching things. I have no problem with "lei re remna" > having 4 legs as a default for most remna pairs that I know. Remember that a claim to have four legs is a claim to have exactly four legs. There is no doubt that "piro lei re remna" has four legs exactly (assuming two-legged persons), and that "pisu'o lei re remna" has any number from zero to four. But what is the interpretation of "lei re remna" without a fractionator? Historically, it has been the latter case, "pisu'o". -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.