From lojban+bncCNf8pM-bDBD5usnuBBoEStLweA@googlegroups.com Tue May 17 04:35:41 2011 Received: from mail-qy0-f189.google.com ([209.85.216.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QMIYm-0007cz-EZ; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:40 -0700 Received: by qyk36 with SMTP id 36sf944060qyk.16 for ; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:26 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:sender :in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :x-original-sender:x-original-authentication-results:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post :list-help:list-archive:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=S6j+Y/odDvuobHAhSJinCfANrDrusvbnd2NBi5j9668=; b=FsuMO+IGLAuoekyc6Vkg47SzBHLzOQY8aFRF2RL5v9DYOhJtNPubozEuOXr1YQqOms abaTVNXMhc5lWmC8dDwwNKmyVvxFULB8YmxsfBJimBYNGqN13YWoj8d31YA+6Ry8q79i K0W8SD8oLk/yb/eIpjr48uGgrpSNI+MPy4fp0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=tigRn9ipHKwN53+w71u7uxGHIQVV1tQWgvuDCdrGk5tqCvpdXbDgfpxuG0Ipc01ZT7 RTUSHWXtJa3Y1FU9wPTweHMZKyIQamTuasapVYmRfGf4yJTuF8J6Y1g2pGlwefP1tiBP iBy+aw7GoFFqFPjGPlfrwRql/UrpAJE4klCZ4= Received: by 10.229.227.200 with SMTP id jb8mr46722qcb.43.1305632121834; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:21 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.229.57.73 with SMTP id b9ls1592688qch.0.gmail; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.229.141.71 with SMTP id l7mr58648qcu.7.1305632120915; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.229.141.71 with SMTP id l7mr58646qcu.7.1305632120899; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-qw0-f52.google.com (mail-qw0-f52.google.com [209.85.216.52]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id w19si98937qco.3.2011.05.17.04.35.20 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.52 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.216.52; Received: by qwb8 with SMTP id 8so206252qwb.25 for ; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.229.90.68 with SMTP id h4mr360119qcm.58.1305632120694; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.229.29.74 with HTTP; Tue, 17 May 2011 04:35:20 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 12:35:20 +0100 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] "lo no" From: tijlan To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: paskios@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.52 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=paskios@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 16 May 2011 13:13, Michael Turniansky wrote: > =A0 No, I am not asking you to arbitrarily make one up.=A0 I am asking yo= u to > think about exactly how many trained assassing I am sending your way, > because all of them are deadly. (And if you think the answer is more than > zero, that says a lot more about your paranoia then it does about lojban > quanitifers.) I already addressed that confusion of yours. Linguistic reference does not hinge upon physical reality. You can make reference to some flying teapot which doesn't physically exist or which you don't believe physically exists. Since "is-flying-teapot" cannot say of nothing but something, anything with the property "is-flying-teapot" is necessarily of more than zero cardinality. When you say "I'm sending the trained assassins your way", you are linguistically referring to some non-zero entity; but I don't here have to assume that the referred entity has a physical factual correlate (such an assumption depends on the pragmatics, not syntax or semantics, of your statement, and I'm informed by that pragmatics that you may not be stating a physical reality). >> "three things" differ from "zero thing" primarily in that >> they are both individually and collectively something as opposed to >> nothing; and so on. As far as cardinality is concerned, the difference >> between "zero" and "some" is more primitive than the difference >> between "zero" and positive integers. The fact that "some" can be >> meaningful in primitive terms of "non-zero" rather than of such >> particulars as "one" or "three", warrants the act of making reference >> to something with no provision for its specific total quantity. > > =A0 It may not be integers, but I would think you defnitely have to be > positive reals, at the very least in order to qualify "some". (su'o) You don't always need to be able to qualify "some" with an exact number, especially when what's at stake is the primitive difference of something from nothing. There are cases when a reference to "non-nothing" is more meaningful than to "three things", for instance. Suppose I want to change the paint of the walls of my room by today's evening -- "I'm going to give them a new coat of paint": mi ba punji lo cinta lo bitmu What's important for me is that the walls will have different paint than the current one -- whether one material or three hundred materials of paints, not important. Not only I'm unconcerned with the number of lo cinta to be applied, also this number is factually undetermined; not only I don't subjectively know how many lo cinta I'm going to use, also there is no objective answer to "lo xo cinta" as of now. It might even turn out that the wall wouldn't after all change by the evening because I had been too busy doing other things or I changed my own mind. Would these factors affect my reference to lo cinta? Would I have made a meaningless statement by "mi ba punji lo cinta lo bitmu" just because I epistemologically couldn't set a specific cardinality for lo cinta? Would I have meant nothing by "lo cinta" just because it eventually turned out to be none? No: regardless of the physical reality, my sumti did refer to the concept of some paint. The term "lo cinta" was primitively meaningful by virtue of the reference to non-nothing, without any exact number as a subjective or objective answer to "lo xo cinta". >> In Lojban, only "no" can exactly quantify nothing, and all non-"no" >> cardinalities can be defined by means of contrast to "no": "nonai". If >> I had to fill the inner quantifier for "no lo xo broda" from your >> example, I might say "nonai". > > =A0 There's no such grammatical contruct, no nai =3D PA NAI or PA UI =3D PA* http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=3Dzasni+gerna+cenba+vreji "NAI: Extended its grammar to that of indicators, i.e. it is allowed after any word." "nonai" would have the composite meaning of "other than zero". And the set of cardinal numbers which are "other than zero" seem more than undefinable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number > but again, I would hate to think > that you can mean by that negatives, or imaginary numbers. "PA mei" never means a negative or imaginary number, insofar as the interlocuters properly understand what cardinality is about. Such 'restrictive' compositions exist in other parts of the language. For example, we don't say "ci lo pa gerku", because, however syntactically valid, "ci" makes no sense in the composition that it's in. Likewise, we shouldn't assume "nonai mei" could mean negatives or imaginary numbers, because such are never to be in the scope set by "mei" in its compositional relation to the preceding PA. mu'o --=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.