From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu May 11 19:38:35 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 11 May 2006 19:38:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FeNXl-00016C-65 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 11 May 2006 19:38:17 -0700 Received: from mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net ([69.17.117.5]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FeNXj-000164-3N for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 11 May 2006 19:38:16 -0700 Received: (qmail 1905 invoked from network); 12 May 2006 02:38:12 -0000 Received: from at.ropine.com (HELO [192.168.1.56]) (sethg@[66.92.76.238]) (envelope-sender ) by mail3.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 12 May 2006 02:38:12 -0000 Message-ID: <4463F513.7060207@ropine.com> Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 22:38:11 -0400 From: Seth Gordon User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.8 (X11/20060502) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 11505 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: sethg@ropine.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list I have skimmed some of this discussion, so pardon me if I missed an important detail, but.... If I understand Maxim's argument, he wants {lo ro cribe} to refer to every bear that exists or may exist, unbounded by any context established by the conversation. By this definition, {lo ro cribe} includes not just every live bear in the real world, but the furry characters in "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", and the stuffed bears on display at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. There are probably a few occasions when it would be useful to make a statement about such a broadly inclusive set of bears, but *damn* few. I would rather have the freedom to have a conversation in Lojban in the museum, say {lo ro cribe cu morsi}, and be understood as saying that all the bears *in this museum* are dead. For any act of communication to take place, the speaker must make a reasonable effort to express himself or herself clearly, *and* the audience must make a reasonable effort to understand. I think part of that reasonable effort is keeping track of the context of what is being said and interpreting the words accordingly. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.