Return-Path: <@SEGATE.SUNET.SE:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET> Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0sS8XQ-0000YjC; Sat, 1 Jul 95 22:49 EET DST Message-Id: Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id B1690C3F ; Sat, 1 Jul 1995 21:47:14 +0200 Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 13:40:08 -0600 Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Lojbab's cnino selbebna sidbo X-To: lojban@cuvmb.bitnet To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 2023 Lines: 40 Lojbab says: >loi mass statements have always been to me so inherently logically weak >in their claim, that logical precision seemed superfluous. Maybe it's possible to logically reason about masses, but there's no inherent set of rules describing the relationship between masses and individuals. I think you can state some facts about loi dembi and reason about them, but there's no way of knowing simply by looking at the grammar, which of your conclusions applies to an individual bean; and vice versa -- you can reason about individual beans without knowing what also is true of the mass. loi dembi cu banzu .iku'i lo dembi cu na banzu .i lo dembi cu cmalu .iku'i loi dembi cu na cmalu Some kind of logical reasoning engine might contain some general rules that tell you that "banzu" doesn't in general scale down from masses to individuals, but some other gismu can scale down. But without those rules it should treat loi dembi and lo dembi as completely unrelated entities. ni'o Concerning your claim that the use of bare "lo" is not strictly logical -- it would be nice if we could come up with a precise meaning for it. Yes, Lojban is supposed to allow both logical and non-logical discourse, but why not make the most common register of usage be a logical one; after all that's Lojban's primary appeal. However it would be a shame if this quantifier scope argument ended up invalidating lots of text, and/or more importantly, Lojbab's and others' intuitive sense of how the existing language means. Maybe we should take more of a descriptive approach, listing logical sentences and what they seem to mean intuitively to the best lojban speakers and in the best-written lojban text, and figure out what the logical rules are. I think that's really what motivated Lojbab's "cnino selbebna sidbo" -- which at first glance appears cnino je sidbo jenai selbebna. ____ Chris Bogart \ / ftp://ftp.csn.net/cbogart/html/homepage.html Quetzal Consulting \/ cbogart@quetzal.com