From DPT@HUMA1.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:18 2010 Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:05:39 -0400 From: "Dylan P. Thurston" Subject: Re: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality) To: Bob LeChevalier X-From-Space-Date: Thu May 18 00:04:34 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Message-ID: la xorxes. cusku di'e > In general, {LE } means the same as {le pe }, > which in turn can also be written as {LE pe } .i.uasai.o'anaise'i pu sidbo mu'a fa le si'o na'i lu le ri panzi li'u joi lu le panzi be fe ri li'u selsmu dunli simxu ("Oh! Oh! Oops. I thought, erroneously and for instance, that {le ri panzi} meant the same as {le panzi be [fe] ri}." Could I use {sinxa} instead of {selsmu}? Is there a way to mark the {fe} as optional? Perhaps {.einai} or {sei zifre}?) la xorxes. pu cusku di'e > > I thought {le} was the form for converting a selbri to a sumti--what's > > it doing twice here? > > It does have some uses. This construction permits things like {le re da}, > for "the two things", very different from {re da}, "two things". I wasn't asking about usefulness, but that is a good example that hadn't occurred to me. {le re da} == {le broda voi remei} == {le te remei}, right? ({le remei} would be a mass, {le se remei} would be a set; {le te remei} gives the same thing as {le re da}, the individuated set (anybody have a better term?) But I doubt anybody's going to remember THAT distinction in practice.) Hmm. > > {le ci ninmu} is almost as bad. > > This one is extremely useful. It is the simplest way to say how many > things you are refering to. But it's not necessary, yes? Wouldn't {le te cimei ninmu} do almost as well? (Or, in practice, {le cimei ninmu}--a {ninmu} can't be a mass or a set, so this isn't really ambiguous.) > > When I first saw it, I thought {ci > > ninmu} was a unit--but no, this is really indecomposable. Consider: > > to say "there are three men in the room" I can say > > > > .i lo ci nanmu ne'i le kumfa > > I suppose you mean: > > (1) i lo ci nanmu cu nenri le kumfa My misunderstanding of the grammar led me to make a mistake; I meant .i lo ci nanmu pe ne'i le kumfa which _does_ mean "there are three men in the room", right? > ... > > as a sumti by itself; but to make a bridi, I need to rewrite this, in > > one of the following ways: > > le ni loi nanmu ne'i le kumfa du li ci > > That's a sumti: The amount of some men being equal to three > inside the room. Sorry, forgot a {cu}: should be le ni rolo nanmu pe ne'i le kumfa cu du li ci > > or > > loi nanmu ne'i le kumfa cu cimei > > That makes more sense: Some men are a threesome inside the room. > > (But other men may be doing something else there.) Does {piro loi nanmu ne'i le kumfa cu cimei} take care of this case? > > or maybe > > da noi te cimei nanmu ne'i le kumfa > > That's not a bridi. It's one sumti: Something which is a set-of-three > type of man inside the room. Damn those {cu}s! I meant {da noi te cimei cu nanmu ne'i le kumfa} > > Umm. I'm not sure which of these mean what I want. In any case, my > > point is that there's this syntax for implicitly making a claim about > > the number of ways to fill in variables to make a sumti true, without > > any corresponding syntax for filling in the places of a bridi. Why > > can't > > ci nanmu ne'i le kumfa > > mean "There are men in the room (three of them)" or some such? > > I remember asking this very same question to John Cowan once, since > the sumti {ci nanmu} can already be said {ci lo nanmu}, why not let > {ci nanmu} be a selbri meaning "x1 is three men"? The answer is that > for historical reasons it is what it is. Oh well. I guess I'll have to live with it. > > > > I've been studying the syntax of sumti. It is, to put it mildly, a > > mess. > > Well, it has its things, but I wouldn't say it's a mess... > You're being more of an iconoclast than I ever was! :) I'm honored to be in such company :-). It does make more sense with my new understanding {pe do}. > > Did you know {le mi do se cusku} is ungrammatical? > > Yes. Whatever would you want it to mean? Well, I thought it meant {le se cusku pe fe mi zi'e pe fi do} -- "that which I expressed to you". But why can't it mean {le se cusku pe mi zi'e pe do}? (There's got to be a technical reason the {zi'e} is necessary, yes? I know {le se cusku pe mi pe do} is grammatical with a different meaning, but {le se cusku pe mi ge'u pe do} is not grammatical.) > > > BTW, strangely enough, {le pe fi le xunre ku plini} is grammatical, but > > > with {be} instead of {pe} it isn't. > > > > What on earth is {le pe fi le xunre ku plini} supposed to mean? > > Pretty much what you meant by *{le fi le xunre ku plini}. OK, I see that now. This does seem to have a few weird consequences, viz. {da pe fi de} is grammatical but with little meaning. But I'm not going to complain, since (a) I'm sure you've heard it all before and (b) it does have a meaning, just not one you'd ever care to express. (I could imagine using {fo'a pe fi da} if {fo'a} had a suitable reference and I wanted to be obscure.) mu'o mi'e. dilyn.