X-Digest-Num: 112 Message-ID: <44114.112.622.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 10:34:24 +0300 From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: di'e preti zo nu X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 622 Content-Length: 1513 Lines: 42 la xorxes. cusku di'e > > No, If I were to drop articles {lei} is the only one I'd keep. {le'i} and > {lo'i} > would be the first ones I'd drop. {.ie} I've never seen any point in these, though perhaps that's because I'm not a logician. I suppose one of Lojban's strengths is as a language for philosophy, so philosophers might well want to use these to talk about sets. > (There's also the function of {lo'e}, but I'm not yet confident that > I understand that one.) > I also find {lo'e} and {le'e} a bit confusing. {lo'e} is described in the cmavo list as "the typical one(s) that really is (are) ..." which implies that we have a (subjective) judgement of typicality on top of on objective classification. {le'e} is "the stereotype of those described as ..." which implies an objective stereotypicality (since one person cannot create a stereotype) on top of a subjective classification. Confusing indeed. > I would agree if we were starting from scratch. I would use a single > article to identify a sumti, and nothing else. But that's not how Lojban > works. In Lojban, articles serve at least two other functions besides > identifying a sumti: to distinguish collective vs. distributive plurals, > lei vs. le, and the le vs. lo distinction, whatever we want to call it. > What is called for is a default / all-purpose article, analogous to {nu} as the all-purpose abstractor. I think {le} serves this purpose quite well, though Jorge would of course disagree. co'o mi'e robin.