From lojban+bncCNuStaWoDxD1iqTeBBoEUPU9Kg@googlegroups.com Fri Apr 16 17:49:19 2010 Received: from mail-gx0-f198.google.com ([209.85.217.198]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O2wDi-0002am-Fo; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:49:19 -0700 Received: by gxk22 with SMTP id 22sf2092362gxk.4 for ; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:49:07 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:received:received:message-id:date :from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to :x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=ZbbXSu8Ti0f9rJWlAjcp08VyFF68OdlrGosS/9U+Ax8=; b=bU6cvQDH64McHDNVrHhwJdDjbT1i5Jxd5zRTrNmaaUW5RY4nXFOnrMsgzCgmq4RPdj 7OTckXY8pscYminZrv+uBpFGWiAxocnYaLSF0ksdYl4NC+3Ohdv7JwmgJAnEIMgXUFZ/ RZ62MiyoIZC5NwizJvAfvPMcc0/s8l7rad+b4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:message-id:date:from:user-agent :mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to :x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=yT+Bb3y4BnxoVDpG1HJStAE4kPExR/QO/ubd5ZP+ApkR3t4zAN0EeCEE7yV8be/lEd TZjVv3f8mf7oSKDB1siz7cFQP4JyzefFGrLpc635236FWFbFIWJVQOQGT+SfW51jWUtJ h8zj1WNKjCzRBuxmfQ+8YdBCN7Zae/gT+1v4w= Received: by 10.91.59.20 with SMTP id m20mr635984agk.10.1271465334037; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:54 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.216.145.167 with SMTP id p39ls1463978wej.0.p; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.172.144 with SMTP id t16mr218778wel.25.1271465332067; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.172.144 with SMTP id t16mr218777wel.25.1271465331977; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-ww0-f44.google.com (mail-ww0-f44.google.com [74.125.82.44]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id n31si3919958wbc.0.2010.04.16.17.48.50; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:50 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of and.rosta@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.44 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.125.82.44; Received: by wwi18 with SMTP id 18so1442181wwi.3 for ; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.90.20 with SMTP id d20mr3060415wef.29.1271465330662; Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.67] (87-194-76-9.bethere.co.uk [87.194.76.9]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id r29sm25325794wbv.21.2010.04.16.17.48.48 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:48:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4BC9056F.9040705@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:48:47 +0100 From: And Rosta User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (Windows/20100228) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo References: <4BBE188B.8070807@lojban.org> <4BC1D15A.5030409@lojban.org> <4BC36464.8010707@gmail.com> <4BC3B98F.5070805@gmail.com> <4BC4B763.6070903@gmail.com> <4BC52345.7010303@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of and.rosta@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.44 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=and.rosta@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com X-Original-Sender: and.rosta@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jorge Llamb=EDas, On 14/04/2010 15:31: > On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 11:07 PM, And Rosta wrote: >> I'm fine with "so'i li mu" being "many fives", coerced by the >> quantification. >> In English, one does get things like "my mother that bore me", "London t= hat >> I have luved in for so many years", which don't coerce a "many >> mothers/Londons" interpretation. So restrictiveness needn't coerce plura= l >> interp. >=20 > I Googled "my mother that bore me", and the first (of only six) hits was: >=20 > "My mother and I=96and by "my mother" I mean always one of my two > mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead=96" >=20 > and that seems like the most natural use for "my mother that bore me" > to me, but some of the other hits are not so clear that the > restriction is doing actual restrictive work. >=20 > The London example sounds odd to my non-native sense without a "the" > in front, and I would want to change "that" to "where" (unless it's a > vocative?), but I don't really want to dispute that there may be > restrictive clauses that don't do any actual restriction. It's rare and stylistically marked, as you'd expect it to be. >> Also, I can't think how the poi/noi distinction can apply when there is = no >> predicate (selbri) present either explicitly, or implicity as when a >> quantifier is applied to a sumti. >=20 > With quantification the distinction is very stark: >=20 > ro da poi xunre cu kukte > Everything that is red is delicious. >=20 > ro da noi xunre cu kukte > Everything, which is red, is delicious. Of course. Also the distinction should pertain to "lo broda poi/noi" too. "= lo broda poi brode cu brodi" =3D "lo ge broda gi brode cu brodi"; "lo broda= noi brode cu brodi" =3D (roughly) "lo broda cu ge brode gi brodi". >>> "PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi" >>> is quantification over the members of the group. >> Yes, I see. I can't decide if the problem goes away if "loi broda" is no= t >> "lo gunma" but rather "zo'e noi ke'a gunma", >=20 > I'd say that "lo gunma" is just the same as "zo'e noi ke'a gunma". >=20 >> since "PA zo'e noi ke'a gunma" >> quantifies over members of zo'e. >=20 > which must be things that satisfy the x1 of gunma. >=20 >> I guess it comes down to whether "zo'e noi >> ke'a broda" necessarily means zo'e is a single broda (as required for "z= o'e >> noi ke'a gunma" to work as a solution) >=20 > No, that's not required. Many things can work as a solution working > together without that making them one thing. (That's essentially > McKay's argument.) But the kind of thing that satisfy the x1 of gunma > is the kind of thing that has members, as opposed to the kind of thing > that satisfy the x2 of gunma, which are typically many things working > together. >=20 >> or whether it can mean zo'e is a >> bunch of broda (as required, I'm fairly sure, by xorlo). >=20 > zo'e can be many broda without necessarily being one anything (whether > bunch or whatever). This boggles my mind. I've looked at Ch 1 of McKay -- pdfs of it and the co= ntents pages are on his webpages. I suspect I must be an exponent of the si= ngularism that his Ch 2 attacks. >> Actually, those are >> both meanings one needs to be able to express. Maybe "zo'e noi pa gunma = ne >> ke'a"? (The thinking in this para is low quality, so feel free to ignore >> it...) >=20 > The two meanings are easily expressible without any recourse to "loi": > "lo broda" vs. "lo gunma be lo broda". I think the contrast I had in mind was "lo pa broda" versus "lo (su'o) brod= a". "loi" is "lo pa gunma be lo", but "zo'e noi ke'a gunma be lo" is probab= ly "lo su'o gunma be lo". >> The actual English example "came by bus" seems to me to demand a generic >> reading (because that seems to be the effect of using _bus_ without an >> article), but if we can use, say, "I will drink wine" as an example, the= n >> the nongeneric reading can be specific or nonspecific, "Ex, x is wine: I >> will drink x" being the nonspecific. >=20 > Right, but I think we don't need to commit to one of the two readings, > or perspectives, to get the meaning. In the case of the bus we may be > forced to by English: >=20 > They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came > by bike, even though (?it / their bus) had to stop for gas. >=20 > It seems to me that "it" can't be used there, because grammatically > "bus" doesn't have a nongeneric perspective available, but: >=20 > They drank wine, and I only had water, so I will drive. Not that I > wouldn't have wanted to drink (it / the wine) too, but they had > finished it before I arrived. >=20 > In this case, it seems to me, "it" seems more acceptable (what are the > native intuitions?). Your intuitions are (unsurprisingly) accurate. ("It" in the bus example is = not impossible, but it would refer to the implied bus travelled on, not to = the mode of transport referred to by "(by) bus". The problem with the examp= le is not that bus is generic but that it wasn't the generic bus, qua mode = of transport, that had to stop for gas.) In your wine example, the version = with "it" is consistent with all three interpretations (generic, specific, = existential). I can see how a linguistic construction can be semantically ambiguous betwe= en these interpretations, but not how the interpretations can be conflated = into one. =20 > But in Lojban both perspectives remain always available, giving > something that would seem weird in English like: >=20 > They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came > by bike, even though bus had to stop for gas. >=20 > So "bus" can be generic and still stop for gas in a particular occasion. English too: "She offered me tea or coffee; I chose coffee, and then spilt = it" >>> What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction, >>> which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way >>> that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not >>> saying anything very convincing about it at this point. >> OK, I understand your point, I think. Translated into my terms, it is th= at >> specific readings are nongeneric; so if something is viewed generically, >> then perforce it's not specific. >=20 > Mmm... I think I'm saying the opposite, that generic readings are > always specific, but because of the arbitrary perspective of > genericity, they can often be taken as nongeneric nonspecific as well. > But I have to keep insisting that I'm not certain if that's exactly > what I'm saying. :) I now understand what you mean. Some particular broda could be the generic = broda, you're saying. Our difference was mainly terminological. But if you think "lo broda" means "some particular broda, which may be the = generic broda", then I see why you think you can do without e-gadri. (How t= o explicitly do generics, though?) Actually, I guess the sole difference be= tween o-gadri and e-gadri might then be veridicality, which, mirabile dictu= , might actually suddenly make pre-xorlo gadri usage mean approximately wha= t the writers thought they were saying. =20 >> "zo'e noi ke'a broda" effectively gives you the generic reading, since >> there's no quantification. >=20 > Yes, though I would want to say "it allows" the generic reading, > rather than "gives". Yes. =20 >> "PA zo'e noi ke'a broda" quantifies over >> tokens/members of the category. >=20 > Thereby forcing a nongeneric (or less generic) reading (and > quantification is always nonspecific). >=20 >> "zo'e'e", with optional noi or no'oi, gives >> specific, and "PA zo'e'e" quantifies over tokens/members of "zo'e'e". Th= at >> seems pretty straightforward... (Admittedly, not straightforward if the = goal >> is to paraphrase gadri using fairly common nonexperimental cmavo.) >=20 > Yes, I think if we have "zo'e'e" then we have "le" figured out, and > vice versa. But putting one in terms of the other doesn't really get > to the bottom of it (at least for me). Maybe zo'e already is zo'e'e?=20 On the one hand one can see a distinction between a reading of "I ate X" wh= ere X is some specific thing amd a reading where X is just whatever it was = I ate -- the generic thing-eaten-by-me, but on the other hand one can see h= ow the second reading can be treated as merely an instance of the first. --And. --=20 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.