Date: Sun, 24 Sep 1995 19:49:42 +0100
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: {soi}
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:
> > Perhaps this relates to the issue of how anaphoric references to
> > pluralities work: does {re prenu cu prami py} mean they each love
> > themself, or does it mean they each love each of them? I think
> > Jorge & others were debating this for each of the systems of
> > anaphora, but I forget (or never knew) what the upshot was.
> I don't think we ever got anywhere, because we were sidetracked
> with other issues.
> There are (at least) three forms: {re prenu cu prami py},
> {re prenu cu prami ri} and {re prenu cu prami vo'a}, that could
> all mean the same or not, and could mean "themself", "each of them",
> or something else: "them (as a mass)".
> My preferences are:
> - That {vo'a} mean "themself". In other words, {prami vo'a} is
>   simply the predicate "x loves x", filled in this case by {re prenu}.
> - That {py} (also ko'a, etc) massifies its antecedent, so that
>   {re prenu prami py} means that two persons love both of themselves.
>   The massification is not very different in this case from saying
>   that each of the two loves each of the two, but in other cases it
>   simplifies matters. For example: {re prenu cu klama le zarci i py
>   te vecnu lo plise}. With massification it means that they bought
>   an apple. Without massification it would perhaps have to mean that
>   each of them bought an apple. In general, if the antecedent is far
>   back, it would be a pain to remember the distributive meaning.
 
I'm skeptical that it would be hard to remember the distributive reading
if that is what one's interpretation has been based on up to that point.
 
I agree with your preference for {voa}.
{koa}, I'd have thought is ambiguous, but disambiguable by
{[re [prenu goi koa]]} versus {[[re prenu] [goi koa]]}, however
that is signalled syntactically.
{py}, I'd be happy to see left vague, glorked-from-context pragmatically.
 
> - I'm less sure about {ri}, but I think it should be either like
>   {vo'a} or like {py}. To get the distributive meaning in that
>   case one would need to specify {ro ri}.
 
If it's like {voa}, {ro ri} wouldn't work. But if it yields a
massification, there's no way to get the bound-variable, "themself"
reading from {ri}.
 
I don't think I could have a preference here. It strikes me that
the whole area of plural sumti/sumvla is under-thought-out, and
could only satisfactorily rectified by building some extra device
into the language to handle it.
 
> > I would prefer to take John's point, and see our mainly in-English
> > use of {sumti, bridi} as loose and ambiguous, as English words often
> > are, and say that the Lojban meanings of {sumti, bridi} really are
> > as the giuste has them. In that case, if {mi klama}, then {mi sumti},
> > and not if {lu mi klama liu se bacru} then {zo mi sumti}.
> I prefer it too, but it won't be easy to take away from {sumti}
> the meaning with which it has always been used.
 
It just needs enough pedants to keep on pointing out the error.
 
> > In this case, we should start being pedantic and use
> >    sumvla    = valsi be lo sumti
> >    brivla    = valsi be lo bridi & not = "brivla" as currently used
> >    selbrivla = valsi be lo selbri
> > "Selbri" denotes a syntactic funtion, the grammatical predicate,
> > and "brivla" denotes words that can function as "selbri".
> > But in that I see no basis for a terminological decision.
> A selbri may be composed of several brivla, e.g. in tanru.
> In {mi mutce gleki}, the selbri is made up of two brivla: {mutce}
> and {gleki}.
 
So what could one use for "brivla"? {selsumvla}?
 
---
And