From lojban+bncCIywt_XDCRDa9sbeBBoE-gU4sg@googlegroups.com Fri Apr 23 08:23:33 2010 Received: from mail-yw0-f137.google.com ([209.85.211.137]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O5Kj2-0003oJ-LX; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:33 -0700 Received: by ywh1 with SMTP id 1sf2995376ywh.28 for ; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:22 -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:message-id:x-ymail-osg:received :x-mailer:references:date:from:subject:to:in-reply-to:mime-version :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=EOYBc4ind6zGIm7hfdB9Tcu2EoneO4m/kmaeTcebF4k=; b=o8nE07WdBordveeOcKwU2Pd5ndVRrpFf8wt0x3uBAGcYopok1AVU+npNyThwuPQIr0 8i2hy27UtHlBZ6XymyeE5AxkXG5T7Nwpn1FY1P/Bezyu+8slJ3fOwE2Vp7naXwWGVlWT aJsmpgLSdzYAKhLhkiA7kKNeWeVBDD5tOYD8I= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:message-id:x-ymail-osg:x-mailer:references :date:from:subject:to:in-reply-to:mime-version :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=iFYpMg2W+nFEeWyiuXmfWO72xLjgpxzoH+KPZNkT8h88rIo+ys0yz6Z9k+HJxOz4VJ c7QSVLKo1+4J03V03qMkGL7um6B8IgbyojejRpcZF5KU4wRQ9j0I/jO1HcX9AvoiyQyA sBsRb1110OgtDVkpclldFs0YJP+jlc6S4m22o= Received: by 10.90.20.18 with SMTP id 18mr59891agt.34.1272036186821; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:06 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.91.91.8 with SMTP id t8ls30260482agl.2.p; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.91.27.37 with SMTP id e37mr112905agj.9.1272036185664; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.91.27.37 with SMTP id e37mr112904agj.9.1272036185615; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from web81305.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web81305.mail.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.199.121]) by gmr-mx.google.com with SMTP id 17si138537gxk.0.2010.04.23.08.23.04; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:04 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 68.142.199.121 as permitted sender) client-ip=68.142.199.121; Received: (qmail 47874 invoked by uid 60001); 23 Apr 2010 15:23:04 -0000 Message-ID: <110412.47416.qm@web81305.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-YMail-OSG: ZuXynXEVM1mKLtVt4kGNi7fIBo4Gckw3VdJlZkW0Lxu15ok P.2LuIbCZEIk7AITs7grOnuKRsWAJqqJ.GKkykbzKEI1948wpt8neoIYa5Hx RyvFm_nEfvMiieLBqbqkfCoInztOIrBHhfaEtZ1okUzTm7Yh.i82RJQ7gQd8 VBjoOWx_Tq13Kh2NueZXoCUoA5qck21ghFv.a.bSPF22N.u3wa3952VzdHZW hzMYiENpZ0pND3JI4mEufN_BhU5LxVc8C5orx4VP1unV6po_NfrWiF7_c3yf lTxGhttgaPqWMIvJhIgQSRfm9d3u7Ro6dW5eeV2YW2fgt9_b4edJ4JR_V7nb r7mWmZizgvg-- Received: from [71.14.73.129] by web81305.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:04 PDT X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/348.5 YahooMailWebService/0.8.102.267879 References: <6a2c862a-91f0-452e-9a31-0064620d5d06@g11g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> <391970.26672.qm@web81302.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <225049.90411.qm@web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <734238.40743.qm@web81307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4BD060B7.5020903@gmail.com> <779167.40101.qm@web81302.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:23:04 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: Re: [lojban] About plural 'ro' To: lojban@googlegroups.com In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 68.142.199.121 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=kali9putra@yahoo.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@yahoo.com X-Original-Sender: kali9putra@yahoo.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=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- Original Message ---- From: Jorge Llamb=EDas To: lojban@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, April 22, 2010 7:36:16 PM Subject: Re: [lojban] About plural 'ro' On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 8:57 PM, John E Clifford wro= te: > From: Jorge Llamb=EDas > > lo tadni cu dasni lo xunre mapku gi'e sruri lo dinju > "The students wore red caps and surrounded the building." > > With groups instead of plural reference, we would have to split the > claim into two: each student (not the group) wore red caps, and the > group (not each student) surrounded the building. > > [And you don't have to do that with plural reference because....? 'dasni= ' is marked for taking its subjects singularly, while 'sruri' is marked for= collective? No, it's not marked at all, at least not by anything other than our general knowledge of the world. I just picked an example where context would make it relatively clear how things were distributed. It's unlikely, but not logically impossible that they were all wearing a cap together, or maybe they just took turns wearing one cap, and it's unlikely, but not logically impossible that each of them surrounds the building. Maybe it's a small toy building. In some other example: lo verba pu bevri lo stuzi lo purdi "The children carried the chairs to the garden." We have no idea whether each child carried one chair, each pair of children carried one, they all carried each chair together, some of them carried one chair while others carried one heavy chair together, etc. If that information is relevant, we will have to supply it by some other means than by the gadri. > I thought that was the gadri's job (together with quantifiers perhaps). No, and it shouldn't be. The distributional possibilities are so immense that having specialized gadri for each one would be madness. > From what you said elsewhere just now (I'm doing these backwards apparent= ly), there seems to be no guarantee that the students who wore red caps and= the ones who surrounded the building are exactly the same -- or even parti= ally, for that matter: 'lo tadni' has different referents at different time= s". But that, of course, violates a basic rule of sentence collapsing: you= can't collapse ab & ac into > a (b&c), if a means different things in the two original sentences, ] "lo tadni" means the same thing in both sentences, of course. [So they were wearing red caps when they surrounded the building. All of t= hem? Were there some red-capped students not involved in surrounding the b= uilding? > i.e. "lo broda" =3D "zo'e noi ke'a broda", it is a sumti whose > referent(s) satisfy the predicate broda. > > [Whoooooa! They don't have to satisfy the predicate in an preestablished= way, but they do have to satisfy it in some way. Any old way will do? Yes. > But that is not what the notion of a description -- or the relevant sense= of satisfaction -- is about. With plural referents you have basically two= choice -- individually, each of them is a broda, or collectively, all of t= hem broda together. Why not in pairs? Or in threes? Or in pairs and threes? Or ...? What makes the two extreme cases the only choices? [[Well, this may be a flaw in logic, but it likes clearcut answers at this = level. We need to be able to look at the referents of a term and tell whet= her it satisfies the predicate. "the surrounded the building" means more t= hat some were here and some were there and some others were over yonder, it= requires some unification. So also, lifting a piano requires some unifica= tion -- and there is no unification in the solution you give you give: thre= e guys do something over here, three others something over there, and so on= .]] > Since these are either just things or L-sets of things, you can't even sa= y that abc broda and def broda, therefore abcdef broda. We can't take the = fact that one thing brodaes yesterday and another tomorrow and combine them= to say that the two are in lo broda today.] Of course not, only if one broda today and the other also broda today can you say that the two broda today. > [So the standard line that 'lo broda' talks about brodaers collectively a= nd 'ro lo broda' talks about them individually is out, as is the assignment= of places to be collective or singular.] Was that your standard line? Mine has been that "ro lo broda cu brode" is distributive, while "lo broda" is unspecified for distribution. (And please don't say that this is new, I've been telling you this for ages, don't make me go look for old posts where we discussed this over and over again.) [[Always getting back to this same problem: What the Hell does 'lo broda' m= ean? Saying over and over again that it doesn't mean anything does not mak= e it any clearer. And remember that the ciurent problem is not about what= 'lo broda'' means or hiow it works but how the thing in it broda.]] To reiterate the definitions for the 100th time: lo broda =3D zo'e noi ke'a broda (nothing here about how the referents are distributed) [[As far as I can tell, nothing here about the referents at all; that is, I= have no idea what 'zo'e' refers to or even if it is a referring expression= . It doesn't look like a name but it doesn't behave like a bound variable.= And, in either case, it doesn't do what it seems to be wanted to do here.= I suppose it might be like 'le broda' an externally bound variable, but t= hat hardly helps explain what 'lo broda' (which is an internally bound vari= able) does.]] ro lo broda cu brode =3D ro da poi ke'a me lo broda zo'u da brode (keeping in mind that "ro" is singular) > As someone once said, the price of infinite precision is infinite verbosi= ty. > > {But this is doing away with a useful precision for not apparent reason a= t all -- except perhaps your still mysterious notion that 'lo' is a totally= content neutral term maker, which also seems pretty pointless It's very useful actually. > (Lord lnows we have enough totally neutral terms already, we don't need m= ore and especially we don't need ones that seem to be doing something usefu= l).] OK, tell me how would you say "the children carried the chairs to the garden". We don't know how they did it, because when we arrived they were already finished. How would you say it with your useful obligatory distinctions? [[I would say that the children collectively carried the chairs to the gard= en, which doesn't go into who carried what or even if every child actually = participated -- that's how it works with teams and similar things which are= presumably models for this sort of talk. If we had more information, we c= ould be more precise, if it were relevant. Similarly, when we say that peo= ple surrounded the building, we don't need to specify exactly where each on= e stood. In short, I am agreeing with you about the facts but puzzled by y= our interpretation of them. Of course, this case is helped by the object b= eing as multiple as the subject, so are further held back from going into d= etails. In any case, it is quite clear how the children are children and t= he chairs chairs, but it is not clear how the piano-carriers are piano carr= iers.]] mu'o mi'e xorxes --=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. =20 --=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.