Message-ID: <20050104220410.75220.qmail@web41907.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 14:04:10 -0800 (PST)
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From: Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
Reply-To: jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar
Subject: [lojban] Re: Holiday Present from the BPFK: The gadri Proposal Has Been Completed
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--- And Rosta wrote:
> > When there is reference to a group, (for example {loi bakni},
> > and {lo gunma be lo bakni}) then you need to use {lu'a} or 
> > {lo cmima be} in order to get to the members of the group, and 
> > then quantify. A direct quantifier in this case will quantify 
> > over groups, because the referents of those sumti are the groups, 
> > not the members.
> 
> Presumably lu'a or cmima are needed to say "3 members of lo vo
> nanmu", too, right? 

No, {lo vo nanmu} does not refer to a group, it refers to four men,
as individuals, the distinction matters. That doesn't mean that what 
we claim about them is distributive. The idea of plural reference
is mostly taken from a paper by Thomas McKay, which can be
read here: http://philosophy.syr.edu/

> What about things like "this is a picture of two snakes" (or
> "every snake depicted by this is..."), or "we drank two wines"
> (or "every [kind of] wine we drank was...")? It is not klesi
> that are depicted or drunk, is it? 

{ti pixra lo re since}, {ro lo since poi ti pixra ke'a},
{mi'a pinxe re lo vanju}, {ro lo vanju poi mi'a pinxe}.

I would just use {klesi} to say {lo blabi xirma cu klesi 
lo xirma}, and ignore the talk about sets in the definition
of {klesi}. People who are more attached to the official 
definitions can use a lujvo for that. In any case, the idea 
of kind can only be made explicit through a selbri. No gadri
(unless lo'e is eventually used for that) makes that distinction, 
but {lo broda} by itself can be used for kinds when context 
makes it clear.

> I suspect your answer will be that the type/instance distinction
> is not made. In that case, presumably you would agree that
> "No snakes are depicted by this and two snakes are depicted
> by this" (and "Exactly 20 wines were drunk by us and exactly
> two wines were drunk by us") can be true, if quantification in the 
> first clause is over instances and in the second clause is over 
> subtypes.

Yes, more or less. You probably wouldn't use {lo vanju} to refer 
to glasses of wine and kinds of wine in the same sentence, but
in principle it could be done.

reno lo vanju (no'u reno lo kabri klani ge'u) e re lo vanju
(no'u re lo klesi ge'u) pu se pinxe mi'a 
 
> On another point, xorlo says "An outer quantifier can be used to 
> quantify distributively over such groups. A fractional outer 
> quantifier can be used to select a subgroup and indicate its 
> cardinality as a fraction of the cardinality of the group." Does
> "ro" count as fractional? 

No, only pi-quantifiers count as fractional. The BPFK has not
yet dealt with fi'o-quantifiers. I support your interpretation 
for them as X out of every Y. That is explained in one of the 
quantifier sections.

> And how would one say "2 out of every
> 3 things that are", as opposed to "2 out the three members of"?

I would say {re fi'u ci lo ...}, but this is not part of
what has been done so far.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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