Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 20:05:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711010105.UAA09996@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: le/lo To: Lojban List In-Reply-To: <199710301639.JAA29525@indra.com> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2075 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 31 20:05:24 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU On Thu, 30 Oct 1997 bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM wrote: > My thesis is that {lo} provides more information to a listener than > {le}; and that sometimes one is misled by the common English glosses > of `the' for {le} and `a' for {lo}. You and your lojban-speaking friend are sitting on a bus when two women get on, one with an oversized bright green purse, and one with an oversized bright red purse. They're the only other people on the bus, and the purses really stand out as absurdities. You happen to be sitting close enough to see that the one with the red purse put a slug in the till, and you want to point this out to your friend. You can't say "lo xunre cu tcica lo brakarce", because 1) it wasn't the purse that cheated, and 2) it wasn't the bus so much as the bus company that was cheated. So you have a choice of "le xunre cu tcica le brakarce", or "lo ninmu poi bevri lo xunre cu tcica lo kagni poi ponse lo brakarce". I think the former is more likely and better. So here's an example where "le" gives more information than "lo". "lo ninmu" refers to more things, in context, than "le xunre"; "le ninmu" is specific but doesn't communicate enough information, and "lo xunre" is just plain wrong. So when you say "lo" provides more information than "le", you're neglecting context -- and your cat/dog example confuses matters by describing an unimagineable context. If people were so unpredictable as to refer to dogs as cats, then "lo" would always provide more information than "le". But in context, "le" probably is more informative most of the time than "lo" could be, because people's intentions are often fairly predictable. "lo" would be more informative if, say, there were a cat and a statue of a cat in the same room -- either one might be "le mlatu", but only the real cat is "lo mlatu". The possibilities are not really infinite unless the people trying to communicate are from infinitely different cultures. But I do agree with your overall point about what le and lo mean and why they shouldn't be simply translated as "the" and "a".