Message-Id: <199602240834.DAA02307@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:07:24 -0800
Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      Re: except, etc.
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Content-Length: 1925

I never said I would be fair.  But in this case I don't feel to bad.
And did point out how to say "only" in Lojban and people went
right on screwing around with it.  So what if what you literally say
in Lojban is "all fliers are birds", rather than  "only birds fly"?
Notice that in English you literally say "Only birds fly" when what
you mean is "all fliers are birds," but no one complains.  If you
really must have "birds" up front, try "no non-birds are fliers" "of
birds, all fliers are them."   Or, "the set of birds includes the set of
fliers."  But notice that the sumti-selbri structures are the same
here as "birds fly," it is just that the claim is different. We would
hardly want to claim that "all women are pregnant" just to keep the
parallelism with "(some) women are pregnant,"  despite the facts.
You make a different claim, something is going to change and here
it is what is subject and what predicate (if you insist on doing it
that way).

As for the Lojban word glossed "only", does anyone know what
UI3b is supposed to be about?  The only other members I could
find were structure markers: main point, incidental point, points on
a part.  So I would read _po'o_  as "All that I'm saying."  But I may
have missed other UI3s which give a broader sense.

Putting quantifiers into predicates is illogical because it  1) violates
types and 2) shows that the analysis of the concept is still
incomplete.

Yes, "even" is or involves essentially a discursive about going
against expectations/norms/..., a contrast that is sorta like the one
in "but" in that it is very hard to pin down.

BTW, I think that _da'a_ is adequate for "some but not all."  It certainly
covers the last part and, I think covers the first as well.  to be sure,
it might be grammatically possible to say _da'aro_ or _da'a n for some n
at least as big as the size of the set in question, but these seem
improper on other grounds.
pc>|83