Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 21:59:19 +0000
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: mamta be ma
In-reply-to: (Your message of Sat, 21 Jan 95 13:16:39 EST.)
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
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Jorge:
> > >> So "lo mamta be koha .e kohe" means koha and kohe are siblings?
> > >I think so.
> lojbab:
> > Not necessarily.  "lo mamta" can be plural.  But then you get distributive
> > sentences under logical expansion.
> "lo mamta" can be plural, but they would all be mothers of both ko'a and
> ko'e. I don't understand what you mean by the distributive sentences.

My reaction too.

> And:
> > > > How would you say "the mothers of Jorge and And"?
> > > Perhaps {lei mamta be la xorxes a la and}.
> > That could refer to just your mum.
> Yes, you'd have to rely on the specificity of {lei}.

I.e. an actually-nonveridical usage. I see. Well that's not really
a solution, so on to my proposal:

> > > If you want to be precise, I don't see any way of shortening {le mamta
> > > be la xorxes be'o e le mamta be la and}.
> > I see another way, though not always a shorter one:
> > Ax, x is a member of {Xorxe, And}: I met the mother of x.
> > (Ax, x is a member of {Xorxe, And}, Ey, y is mother of x: I met y.)
> > There might be a way to do that without using a prenex.
> >    I met lo mamta be xohu ro luha luhi la xorxes ce la and
> > (I've guessed at the syntax of that.) Xohu is the UI indicating
> > scope leaping.
> That doesn't work for me. The Ey is before the Ax in your Lojban sentence.
> If {xo'u} is supposed to reverse this, I don't really see how it works
> in general.

This is exactly the purpose of xohu [so named by me, but proposed by
pc]. Normally as you work left to right through the sentence you add
elements to the right end of the (implicit) prenex, so if X is after
Y then X is within the scope of Y. But when you hit something marked
with xohu you add it to the start of the implicit prenex instead.
Neat, eh? That's how xohu works in general. As for how it works in
solving this problem with coordination:

  lo patfu be lo mamta be lo patfu be lo mamta be la xorxes beho beho
  beho beho .e lo patfu be lo mamta be lo patfu be lo mamta be la .and

can be abbreviated to

  lo patfu be lo mamta be lo patfu be lo mamta be xohu ro luha
  luhi la xorxes ce la .and

If this works, it's a further argument for xohu (which was originally
proposed during the opacity debate for labelling transparent sumti
in opaque contexts, especially imperatives).

---
And