Message-Id: <199601071326.IAA22732@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sun, 7 Jan 1996 13:00:53 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: tech:masses
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 3035

John:
> > 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.

A kind of statistical abstraction - add up all the chicagoans and divide
by the total number of chicagoans. It gives contrast like loi chicagoan
drinks 300 megalitres of beer a year while the average chicagoan drinks
300 litres of beer a year.

> "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.

That could be done by {loe (ro) le((h)i) broda}, couldn't it?

> > {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.

I was implicitly translating "ro la broda" as "each of la broda" -
"the set has each of the things designated by "Broda" as its member".

> > 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".

Maybe this is a non-issue, since the cmene is a nonce designation - a
label or pointer rather than a name [By "name", I mean an entry in
some standard onomasticon, where you look up the name and it points
you to the individual designated by it]. In that case, it doesn't
really matter whether each referent of "la cmen" is labelled/named
"cmen"; all that matters is that the words "la cmen" contribute to
logical form the array ('distributivity') of constants A, B, C (i.e.
the referents of "la cmen").

coo; mie: lai And