From lojban-out@lojban.org Sun May 28 14:46:18 2006 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 43486 invoked from network); 28 May 2006 21:46:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.67.36) by m28.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 28 May 2006 21:46:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta10.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 28 May 2006 21:46:16 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FkT5R-00087F-M9 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:46:13 -0700 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FkT2P-000850-FE; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:43:09 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FkT1w-00084r-3P for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:36 -0700 Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.168]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1FkT1r-00084j-IS for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:35 -0700 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id j40so678720ugd for ; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.67.97.7 with SMTP id z7mr1330073ugl; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.66.255.6 with HTTP; Sun, 28 May 2006 14:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 15:42:28 -0600 In-Reply-To: <925d17560605280905u63d61d78k73da849a8d7856f1@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <925d17560605160731j379ecfdbo42862a88433e112c@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605260732u5039a616jf8c220a7a485a12a@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605270712l6aa155efic0a7482d4ee0ba43@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605271658m1056888dm5385d20dc29df6db@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605271918x535ab3dre73d854264c1549d@mail.gmail.com> <925d17560605280905u63d61d78k73da849a8d7856f1@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 11685 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: maxim.katcharov@gmail.com X-list: lojban-list X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Originating-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-Msg-Info: 2:12:4:0 X-eGroups-From: "Maxim Katcharov" From: "Maxim Katcharov" Reply-To: maxim.katcharov@gmail.com Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all} X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790; y=b44nIPBKN4W37YveS8ac5EiqfriQuiQBo8QvvDBc8zvl7VYCDA X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 26104 On 5/28/06, Jorge Llambías wrote: > On 5/28/06, Maxim Katcharov wrote: > > On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías wrote: > > > Then I don't understand why the above was an absurd misrepresentation > > > of your position. > > > > Because > > > > 1 {le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e sruri le dinju} > > > > is not the correct way to say > > > > 2 "The fifty students wore hats and surrounded the building." > > But I didn't say that your position implied that. I said that that's what > *my* view allows, i.e. the view that does not introduce an encompassing > entity allows to use a distributive and a non-distributive predicate with > the same referent. Your view disallows it, because under your proposed > interpretation of {le} the Lojban claim would entail that there was an entity > that both wore a hat and surrounded the building. No, under my interpretation, (1) is not the correct way to say (2), which means that at no point do I assert that you would have a single entity of 50 students that wore a hat or what have you. My position is that you can't treat the same thing in two different ways on a whim - that is, you can't treat a mass of students as a mass, and then as individuals. > > > In fact, (2) is not the 'correct' way to say it either - (2) is a > > shortened form of > > > > 3 "The fifty students wore hats and together surrounded the building." > > I think (2) is proper and correct English. (3) is also correct, and more > precise. Yes, it is, because English allows you to omit certain words that many other speakers are also prone to omitting. However, when translating into Lojban, you need to use the most "proper" wording, otherwise there's a large chance that a mistake will be made. In this case, a mistake /has/ been made. (2) was translated verbatim into {[L_ muno tadni] cu [dasni lo mapku] gi'e [sruri le dinju]} which is incorrect, since it implies that the (each) same thing that wore hats surrounded the building. This is then excused by saying that {L_ muno tadni} could be taken either as a mass or individuals - which is wrong. Even English doesn't have that ambiguity: "The fifty students wore hats and surrounded the building." It's not the case that "the 50 students" acts differently in each part of the sentence, it's that the word "together" has been left out. Another way to solve this problem should be found (not a hard task), because this solution is not right. > > {le muno tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e lu'o lego'i sruri le dinju} > > "50 students wore hats and together they surrounded the building" > > > > (Perhaps {loi} is better than {lu'o}) > > (I'm not perfectly sure about {lego'i}, maybe one of > > {vo'a/ko'a/la'edi'u/ra} is more correct) > > That's ungrammatical. {gi'e} connects bridi-tails, which consist of > a selbri followed by any number of sumti. The structure is as follows: > > ... [( ...) gi'e ( ...)] > > The fronted sumti are common to the two selbri, the trailing sumti go > with each of the selbri. You can't introduce a sumti between {gi'e} and > . Thanks, my understanding of gi'e is quite rudimentary. > In order to connect two full bridi, you need to use {i je} in afterthought > mode, or {ge ... gi ...} in forethough mode. So either: > > le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku i je lu'o ra sruri le dinju > > or: > > ge le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi lu'o ra sruri le dinju Sure, whatever works best. > > Of course, if you think that {lu'o lego'i} is a big headache, then > > perhaps you'll support something like: > > > > {le muno tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'eloi sruri le dinju} > > That's ungrammatical too. {loi sruri} is a sumti and after {gi'e} you > need a selbri. Indeed. It's a suggestion: have a word that facilitates what you'd like. {loicu} seems a bit long. Since {lu'o} seems redundant, perhaps its meaning could be altered? > > I don't think the expression {lu'o le go'i} is a big headache. The big > headache is having to separate the sumti into two sumti every time > you need to combine distributive and non-distributive predicates. If you needed to say something about a dog (that it's white) and about some cats (that they run), you would say {lo mlatu cu bajra i lo gerku cu blabi} and not {lo danlu cu bajra gi'e blabi} Yes, the first requires more effort, but the second is incorrect. In the same way, I argue that you cannot see {L_ muno tadni} as one thing for {dasni...}, and then something entirely different for {sruri...} - a mass of students is, after all, a different entity than each one of the students is. > > But I guess onwards with demonstrating that your (and McKay's) > > perception of masses is incorrect. I'll remind you of my objection to > > your conception of "mass": > > > > -quote- > > On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías wrote: > > > The non-singularist view holds that you can make a predication about > > > several things without having to distribute it or having to introduce > > > an encompassing single entity. > > > > How exactly is this sensible? X is a surrounder of the building, but > > only when you look at it as her being in the company of A..W? X the > > groupmate surrounds the building, but X does not? No, X the groupmate > > does not surround the building. A..X, together/as a group/mass > > surround the building. > > > > A quote (of supposedly McKay) that I found: > > The fact that some individuals are surrounding a building does not > > automatically imply that some single individual (of any kind) > > surrounds the building. > > > > Yes, it does imply that. In this case, the mass of students is that > > entity. Just because a mass does not take on a distinct physical shape > > does not mean it's not there. > > > > Let's say that 10 soldiers then surrounded the students (together, and > > not in the sense that these 10 soldiers each hugged a student). We > > have a way to say this: "the squad surrounded the students". Yes, we > > do explicitly treat groups as entities. You can't simply say "well, > > look! No definite entity is mentioned explicitly, and I won't bother > > to see if an implicit entity exists. After all, it's ridiculous to > > think that some things seen together could just 'magically' be seen as > > a new entity, right? ...and therefore no entity exists". > > > > -endquote- > > But in my view {le sonci cu sruri le tadni}, "the soldiers surrounded > the students", does not require any new entity either. The things In my view, it doesn't require any "new" entity either. The entity is already implied: the mass of soldiers. Calling it "new" makes it sound like I'm bringing in something entirely foreign to account for this. What I'd like to know is how you account for the building being surrounded. What surrounds it? Each student does *not* surround it. What surrounds it is that "mass" of students. It's a type of thing that can be clearly recognized - we even have names for it: crowd, mob, swarm. You seem to have a belief that you can say that each student surrounds the building, but only when seen in the company of other students. And aha! You don't have to introduce some sort of strange and other-worldly entity that clearly doesn't belong. How efficient! But how exactly is this sensible? X is a surrounder of the building, but only when you look at it as her being in the company of A..W? X the groupmate surrounds the building, but X does not? No, X the groupmate does not surround the building. A..X, together/as a group/mass surround the building. The crowd of students surrounds the building. The mass formed of students surrounds the building. (Even people who write books can be incorrect.) > being surrounded can be more than one just as much as the > surrounders. Any argument of the predicate can be distributive > or non-distributive. > > > > > Ok, so your rule for using {lo} distributively/ambiguously is "if the > > > > outer is blank, it is ambiguous, otherwise, distributive", correct? > > > > > > For any sumti whatsoever, not just for {lo}, I take an outer quantifier > > > to be distributive, yes. > > > > I take this to mean that your{re loi ci nanmu} means something > > entirely different from "(only) 2 of the group of 3 men" ("...carried > > the piano"), yes? > > In my view {re loi ci nanmu} means the same as {re lo ci nanmu}, because > the non-distributivity introduced by {loi} is then cancelled by the > distributivity > of the outer {re}. You'd have to say {loi re lo ci nanmu} to get a > non-distributive > "two of three". This doesn't strike you as unnecessarily complex? > > Here is a simple demonstration: > > > > your{lo mu tadni sruri lo pa grana} > > > > could mean either: > > > > "together the five students surrounded the pole" > > "the five students each surrounded the pole" > > > > So, yes, I want to call that ambiguous, and I'm perfectly correct in > > my usage of the word. I find your insistence that "ambiguous" refers > > only to gismu-like words with multiple meanings to be disagreeable, > > both with me and with the common dictionary definitions linked to > > earlier. > > The marking of distributivity/non-distributivity properly belongs with > the selbri, not with the sumti. "Together" and "indiviually" in English > are adverbs, they modify the verb phrase, not the noun phrase, that's Lojban uses cmavo that account for English verbs, nouns, tenses, forms, adjectives, pronouns etc. - actually, I havn't checked if this is true, but the point remains: you can't treat Lojban as English. Noun phrases are not quite sumti, verbs are not quite selbri. It's not enough to say "together is an adverb in English, so in Lojban it's [...]". > why in English you can use the same noun phrase with a distributive > and a non-distributive predicate at the same time: > > The fifty students (wore hats individually) and (surrounded the > building together) "Individually" is a word for helping the English listener when that listener might suspect that the word "together" has been omitted (which it usually is, by the way). Perhaps you'll argue vice-versa? Regardless, there is no superclass between "individually" or "together". There are only shortcuts of the English language. > Two predicates, "...wore hats individually" and "...surrounded the building > together" are predicated of the same referents, the fifty students. > > The adverbs "individually" and "together" can help make the predicate > more precise, but they are not obligatory. This is similar to the way you can > say: "The students walked quickly" and just "the students walked". The > adverb "quickly" makes the predicate more precise, it excludes the possibility > that they walked slowly, but does not make "the students walked" ambiguous. This is all based on something unproven: please show that there is a superclass above 10 students, and the collective entity formed of 10 students. > An ambiguous phrase is something like "time flies like an arrow" which > can be parsed in (at least) two different ways. But nevermind, keep > using ambiguous in your sense if it makes you happy. In your sense, my > {lo} is ambiguous, yes. I just don't think that says something very useful. > > In Lojban, for whatever reasons (some good ones and some bad ones), > the distributivity of a place of a predicate ended up being marked on the > sumti rather than on the selbri. Yes, {loi X} would mean {lo gunma lo X}. It's on the sumti because that's where it should be. In English, it's "on the verb" because we want to refer to X as a noun phrase, even though it's not the 'highest' noun phrase, because this is convenient in so many cases: "Together the students surrounded the building and wore hats." We'd like "the students" to be the noun phrase of "wore hats", and so that's the way English chooses to handle it - by making "together" transient, that is, it only applies to the referent in that single sumti-place, and is thereafter discarded. > But it is still useful to have a neutral form > of the sumti, so that you can combine distributive and non-distributive > predication without having to replicate the sumti. Use {lu'o} (or whatever) after a {gi'e} in the same transient manner in which English occasionally uses "together". There are many other solutions. I think it deserves mention that I don't see it as a "neutral form" at all, since I don't think that such a thing exists, aside from as an ambiguous structure in your version of Lojban. > > > > If the speaker says {lo ro cribe poi zvati le dalpanka}, the very act of saying > > > those words brings bears not in the zoo into the universe of discourse > > > > Sure, but just because you 'brought a whole bunch of bears into the > > discourse', doesn't mean that your{lo ro cribe} will refer to all of > > them later. For example, we might talk about all bears in the forest, > > and then I might ask you your"did you see all the bears when you went > > to the zoo?" question: > > > > xu do pu viska lo ro cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka > > Did you see all bears when you visited the zoo? > > > > The your{lo ro cribe} would refer not to "all bears that have ever > > been brought up" (i.e. bears in the forest), but clearly to a > > contextually *sensible* group of bears, that is, the bears in the zoo. > > That's right. So, putting your 'individually'/'together' aside for now, you have your A: {lo ro cribe} "all bears of a contextually sensible set of bears" which is equivalent to B: {ro lo cribe} "all bears of a contextually sensible set of bears" since they would both mean the same thing in {xu do pu viska XXX ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka} putting your 'individually'/'together' aside, of course. We are right to put it aside, because we should decide what the inner and the outer mean before dealing with things like distributivity. Now, you have a third ambiguous interpretation to fit in among {lo} (individually) and {loi} (together). You choose to use one of the above to implement it. There are two problems with this: 1) You're basing this addition on {lo ro cribe} meaning "all of a group of contextually sensible set of bears" - effectively the same thing as {ro lo cribe}. But really, you don't have two options, one of which you can use for this "ambiguously together/individually". I don't know what inner {ro} means in your version (I suspect it has no meaning), but {lo ro cribe} does not mean "all of a group of contextually sensible set of bears", because that's butchery. Let's treat the outer and inner as a special fraction, for demonstrative purposes. {pa lo re} would be [1/2], {su'o lo so} would be [?/9], {ro lo ci} would be [*/3], {lo ci} would be [?/3], {ro lo} would be [*/?]. This fraction has special properties, for example: "[1/3] bears swim" means that the other 2 bears do not; etc. Now, you propose that inner {ro} means "all of a contextually sensible group of...", which is [*/?]. This would mean that {ci lo ro} is [3/[*/?]] (which math tells us is the same as [3/?]). Why, exactly, do we have a deviant three-part fraction like [3/*/?], especially when [3/?] does the job well enough? The interpretation that {lo ro} means "all of a contextually sensible group of ..." is wrong. "All of a contextually sensible group of ..." is *{ro lo}*, no need to create a strange and synonymous way to say it. Ah, (you say,) but {ro lo} is ambiguous/distributive/whatever, and that's different! No: first come up with a coherent and systematic system of inner and outer quantifiers, and *then* worry about distributivity/{lo} vs. {loi} vs. {lu'o}. 2) You can't use {lo danlu cu bajra gi'e blabi} to refer to a white dog and running cats, and so you can't use {[L_ muno tadni] cu [dasni lo mapku] gi'e [sruri le dinju]} to refer to a number of students and to a mass composed of students. A mass of students is, whether it's convenient or not, a different entity than what each one of the students is. There is no way to refer both to "mass composed of X" and "X" at the same time (there is no superclass). 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.