From cowan Fri Jan 5 15:22:15 1996 Subject: Re: tech:masses From: John Cowan To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu (Lojban List) Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 15:22:15 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601051845.NAA16415@locke.ccil.org> from "ucleaar" at Jan 5, 96 06:20:09 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2154 Message-ID: la .and. cusku di'e > I now feel much clearer in my mind about the meaning of {loi}, {lei} > and {loe}. About {lee}, {lai} and {lahi} I remain uncertain. For {lee}, > I suggested pc's "average chicagoan" interpretation. I don't remember what that is. "le'e broda" means that you take the members of "lo'i broda", perform an in-mind selection, and then take the "lo'e" of the result. So it gives you a {lo'e}-type abstraction that is based on a subset of the population chosen by the speaker. > {lai}, I hope > could be a collective counterpart to {la}, which is distributive; > maybe that's the current situation, and I just hadn't realized it > because noone uses {la} to refer to pluralities. Just so. {lai cribe} is a mass of those whom the speaker on this occasion refers to as "Bear", and {lai smit.} ditto for "Smith". > As for {lahi broda}, > I presume it's the set that has ro la broda as its member. I'm not sure what you mean by "member". If you mean "member(s)", then this is correct. > If that's > correct, then whereas in the le- and lo-series, {le} and {lo} are the > basic terms, in some ways in the la-series it is {lai} that is the > basic term, since it is the referent of {lai broda} that is actually > called "broda". Thus, > > [1] lai cmen cu selcme zo cmen > > would be true, but > > [2] la cmen cu selcme zo cmen > > (if {la cmen} refers to a plurality) and > > [3] lahi cmen cu selcme zo cmen > > could be false. No, I think this is wrong. If "la cmen." refers to more than one thing, then each of them must be named "cmen.", so your Example 2 is correct, and means "Each of the referents of 'la cmen.' is named 'cmen.'", or more colloquially "Each Shmen is called 'Shmen'". Your Example 1 means that the mass of things which are named "cmen." is itself called "cmen.", which is probably always true (I can't think of a counterexample offhand.) Example 3 is false indeed, unless you choose to give sets names, but by default the set of things named "John" is not itself named "John". -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban.