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Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 15:51:37 -0600
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From: "Maxim Katcharov" <lojban-out@lojban.org>
Reply-To: maxim.katcharov@gmail.com
Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
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On 6/6/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/5/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >    lo pa no lo mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e sruri lo dinju
> > >    10 of 50 students wore hats and surrounded a building.
> > >
> > So lo has a default outer {ro}?
>
> No, it has no outer quantifier.
>
> > Because otherwise something like {lo
> > pano lo muno tadni} says "some number of 10 of 50 students".
>
> No, just 10 of 50.

So a second {lo} has no outer quantifier? It performs some sort of
task that I (for one) haven't heard of until now? It doesn't (says CLL
6.9).

If it has any form of blank outer quantifier, and that outer
quantifier is not defaulted to {ro}, then {lo pano lo muno tadni} says
"some undefined number of 10 of the 50 students", exactly as it does
in {lo pano tadni}, "some undefined number of the 10 students".

>
> > Additionally, I don't think that a double lo is sensible. {pa lo re lo
> > ci tadni} says the same thing as {pa lo ci tadni}.
>
> Even if they did say the same thing, how does that make it not
> sensible? There are usually many different ways of saying the same
> thing.

Because it's like introducing two ways to say {ci}. {pa lo re lo ci
tadni} does not suggest a single useful thing (unless you're making
groups, which lo doesn't do). What problem does it solve?

>
> Anyway, any number of LE's are allowed as long as there is an
> intervening quantifier between each pair.

Right. The issue is that the blank outer on a {lo} means "some
undefined number", and so your rebuttal is unacceptable.

>
>
> > >      (1a) ro le tadni cu dasni lo mapku
> > >      (1b) la alis me le tadni
> > > => (1c) la alis cu dasni lo mapku
> > >
> > >      (2a) lu'o le tadni cu sruri lo dinju
> > >      (2b) la alis me le tadni
> > > => (2c) la alis kansa le drata tadni lo nu sruri lo dinju
> ...
> > Something like (1c) {la alis cu dasni lo mapku} provides a definite
> > link between Alice and the sumti-slot, which lets us know her exact
> > relationship to the students and to the surroundment of the building.
> >
> > (2c), however, is suggestive at best. Consider:
> >
> > (4a) lo tadni cu sruri lo tadni
> > (4c) la alis kansa le drata tadni lo nu sruri lo tadni
> > (4d) [alice] is accompanied by [the other students] in [the event of
> > (the students) surrounding the students]
> >
> > Where is the relationship? Is Alice a surrounder, or one of the
> > surrounded? There's no definite indication.
> >
> > So again, I ask you, what is the relationship between Alice and the
> > sumti-slot, the students who surround the building, the surroundment
> > of the building?
>
>   la alis me pa le tadni poi lu'o ke'a sruri le dinju
>   Alice is one of the students that surround the building together.
>

So, your bunch-together is actually a mass then? You concede to my
point that there really is no pluralist position between "each
individually" and "as parts of a mass"?

Either that, or that lu'o doesn't mean what I think it to mean. I
think that it transforms the thing to a mass, and not that it has
anything to do with the pluralist "bunch-together". Is this correct?
Because if not, then you're just diverting my question without
answering it.

> > >      (3a) le tadni cu broda
> > >      (3b) la alis me le tadni
> > > => (3c) la alis ?
> > >
> > > Is that your question?
> >
> > My question is: you have the pluralist view, and it has an ambiguous
> > {le tadni}, which could mean one of two things in any particular sumti
> > slot.
>
> {le tadni} always refers the same things, but the slot it fills could be
> marked as distributive or non-distributive, yes.

No, not marked. We've been through this. Slots are not marked for anything.

>
> > First, it could mean "distributively" (bunch-individually), as
> > in "the students wore hats". Second, it could mean
> > "non-distributively" (bunch-together), as in "the students surround
> > the building". If the difference between the two has nothing to do
> > with "mass", then what is the difference?
>
> Introducing a mass is one way of dealing with it, so I wouldn't say it
> has nothing to do with it. My preferred way of dealing with it is by not
> introducing any encompassing entity, so:
>
>  la alis me pa le tadni poi ge ro ke'a dasni lo mapku gi lu'o ke'a
> sruri le dinju
>  "Alice is one of the students which each wear a hat and together surround
>  the building".

Ok, then what, if not a mass, are you using to describe the
relationship? You don't say the word {gunma}, but it's still a mass -
unless you can describe some other thing, like "bunch-together" (which
you havn't been able to make at all distinct from "mass").

>
> > > What can I say about Alice knowing that she is
> > > one of the students and knowing that the students are/do something, but
> > > not knowing whether the something is predicated distributively or
> > > collectively?
> >
> > I don't think Alice knowing anything has anything to do with this. I
> > don't care what Alice knows, I care how she fits into the
> > relationship.
>
> "What can I say about Alice, knowing that ..."
>
> I'm sorry that the missing comma threw you off.
>
> > > The answer is: nothing.  From (3a) and (3b) there is nothing
> > > similar to (1c) or (2c) that I can conclude. Perhaps If I knew what {broda}
> > > was, I could make a fairly good guess as to whether in (3a) the predicate is
> > > meant distributively or collectively (or in some other way, see example
> > > below), and conclude accordingly about Alice, but without any markings,
> > > I cannot answer, just as I cannot answer whether the brodaing is meant to
> > > be happening now, in the past, or in the future (though again, with context I
> > > might be able to make a good guess).
> >
> > A bit beside the point, but what would you look for as an indicator
> > that it is one and not the other?
>
> Just my general knowledge of the world. For example, I know that hats
> are normally worn by one person, so if I'm told that some students are
> wearing hats I will assume that they do it individually and not together. If
> I'm told that some students are surrounding a building, I will assume that
> they are doing it together and not individually.

What do you mean by doing it together? When I hear that, I think "the
mass that they compose is doing it", as in "the crowd of students
surrounded the building".

> When either distribution is
> possible, and there are no clues in the context to suggest which one is the
> case, I will ask the speaker whether they mean individually or together (if
> it's important to determine that, it may be irrelevant too). Similarly
> for tenses,
> if someone says "Alice takes a hat out of her bag and puts the hat on her
> head" I will assume that the taking of the hat out of the bag happened before
> the putting it on the head, because that's the temporal ordering that makes
> most sense. If there are no clues to figure out the temporal ordering, I have
> to ask about it.
>
> > > Consider another example:
> > >
> > >      le pa no nanla cu bevri le pa no stizu le purdi
> > >      "The ten boys took the ten chairs to the garden."
> > >
> > > Now how could that be done? In many different ways:
> > >
> > > (1) Each boy took one chair.
> > > (2) Five boys took one chair each, one boy took two chairs, and the three
> > >      remaining boys took the last chair (a very heavy one perhaps).
> >
> > It's enough to say that the group of boys took the group of chairs,
> > because it'll probably be your choice to see it in that way
> > (regardless of how who did what). If you want to be explicit about it,
> > you can just write it out in Lojban as you did here in English.
>
> Indeed, that's my point.

Your pluralist method isn't needed to handle this.

>
> > > (3) All the boys together took all the chairs together (all stacked pehaps).
> > > (4) Many other combinations.
> > >
> > > We could, of course, say exactly how the boys distributed the chairs among
> > > themselves, but we may not need to. Maybe all we want is to say that the boys
> > > took the chairs to the garden, and the details of how they did it are irrelevant
> > > to us. Why should we be forced to spell everything out in painful detail?
> >
> > You aren't. Painful detail would be writing (2) out in full when you
> > don't want to.
>
> Exactly.
>
> > > Furthermore, if {le nanla} is to be interpreted as {ro le nanla} and
> > > {le stizu} as
> > > {ro le stizu}, we get that the simplest form {le nanla cu bevri le
> > > stizu le purdi}
> > > results in one very unlikely claim, that each of the boys took each of
> > > the chairs
> > > to the garden. (If we wanted to say that, it is very easy to add the {ro},
> > > but having the {ro} there by default is just very inconvenient.)
> >
> > I lean more towards an outer {su'o} than an outer {ro}.
>
> An outer {su'o} would be almost as bad in this case "at least one of the
> ten boys took at least one of the ten chairs". But I want to say that the
> ten boys took the ten chairs, without having to specify how they did it
> distributionally. I don't want to make the much weaker claim that at least
> one of the boys took at least one of the chairs.

If context says that the most sensible number is "all", then that's
what it'll be. Like I said, su'o emphasizes that it might not be all,
but it doesn't actually mean it. A better default outer might be "less
than or equal to all, and not zero" (which is the same thing as su'o,
just worded with different emphasis).

>
> > > > > It's interesting to note that while Lojban has gadri corresponding to the
> > > > > {joi}-connective, it has no gadri corresponding to the {fa'u}-connective, so
> > > > > to get the "respectively" reading fully explicited you have to duplicate
> > > > > the sentence:
> > > > >
> > > > >  ro le tadni cu dasni pa le mapku ije ro re mapku cu se dasni pa le tadni
> > > >
> > > > ro ri mapku, yes.
> > >
> > > You probably mean {ro lo ri mapku}.
> > > {ro ri mapku} means "each of them is a hat".
> >
> > You said {ije... ro re}, "all two". I assumed that you made a typo,
> > and meant something like "and those hats in the last sentence, each is
> > worn by a student"
>
> Right, I made a typo but not that one: I meant {ro le mapku}.
>

Ok


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