From lojban+bncCIywt_XDCRCD_MnuBBoEGqIOXw@googlegroups.com Tue May 17 06:54:26 2011 Received: from mail-gw0-f61.google.com ([74.125.83.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QMKj8-0004Si-Mm; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:26 -0700 Received: by gwb11 with SMTP id 11sf537424gwb.16 for ; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:16 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:x-beenthere:received-spf :x-yahoo-newman-property:x-yahoo-newman-id:message-id:x-ymail-osg :x-mailer:references:date:from:subject:to:in-reply-to:mime-version :x-original-sender:x-original-authentication-results:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post :list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe :content-type; bh=hCDsJ+Y+0jHwM/Zms3f+2wdnCavtxnateWwWH8fpUJg=; b=3Ef5BeJACMjg+a5Gf51/pcNiAwmWEqD9r+lKzc1nt1Sjq3/wEgHwfCRqudR2jg8098 TEyICaf1HomBxBpyCIqYw0E5oiAuCsc12mdSMPG0RwoK50g8TYllBvzbJyVVPxioqoav I4UcsjXnzBLoTQ3z95jOIhtoXmY834uDiH7Ss= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-yahoo-newman-property:x-yahoo-newman-id :message-id:x-ymail-osg:x-mailer:references:date:from:subject:to :in-reply-to:mime-version:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=GQ0u4BzygQux9DxGJdoe7/LX+t9lEXKtBiyiAB8yUoIe61ZA4b4CsB4CjZjKlwJK3R cLX9d9NDC0iLbmx13ABAtGSGcGJfcTiTR54uqGQTyBwhiybo9dapNQ77artHhjhteyEf Mz11E9AFHNm2rGBN+rizjTS+S58zoTvnwjJgQ= Received: by 10.100.89.7 with SMTP id m7mr46385anb.27.1305640451735; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:11 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.101.197.18 with SMTP id z18ls656795anp.1.gmail; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.101.196.20 with SMTP id y20mr299665anp.11.1305640450852; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.101.196.20 with SMTP id y20mr299664anp.11.1305640450816; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nm23-vm0.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com (nm23-vm0.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com [66.94.236.141]) by gmr-mx.google.com with SMTP id j12si198519ank.5.2011.05.17.06.54.09; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:09 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 66.94.236.141 as permitted sender) client-ip=66.94.236.141; Received: from [66.94.237.196] by nm23.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 17 May 2011 13:54:09 -0000 Received: from [66.94.237.115] by tm7.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 17 May 2011 13:54:09 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp1020.access.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 17 May 2011 13:54:09 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 494973.34870.bm@omp1020.access.mail.mud.yahoo.com Received: (qmail 19431 invoked by uid 60001); 17 May 2011 13:54:09 -0000 Message-ID: <341474.92560.qm@web81302.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-YMail-OSG: TmBAAuMVM1mZMLBSu96Qap6GeehBqEI32myqnWkvORBAj2b MM1q4rOhlO03nLclPc585aIEKU7pC7bARWzNPvZCHCUTaownGFt58vhdqGya c1R88Z8KcI8tM_v7qBfkymymmAFCjGnh9luyuHVm9BszZsrXw8SqwdSyhDfp Wj7TvYJYQKaPBMjRXV7b_sMuS1WnIDbEnPcp0Kfx2JodPJ6OVHNfyrWSq9Xd EsP0aedaQVvt0kwRBh.Hx.3QGk5Y5XMDgigabelCnHA.I2fkll1EiGaBSD96 Ofzg2NCBP5jBE8hHKYtOw9JKEykQdRxYMJQNCt4xsdZ6tW0_.vefX1JfnpaM KhfXFy5PIccv1e7dKVEmPkQLX3sGDbqMomfhC8H44CWeFPcI8.k5yVIhycM3 .jlgbVRAoaimdlu.KXdzVLvqNI2XVNPNdPWZu54QThrBTcV2mVDPBdRuuS1s mNUpY3Y88rt3t9AABHF6_.Y_zSdX7khcWGIlCdMigNHO61DrJpCMKRBkiAiF yyVSUBc_cKgsI2Y2yB5xJ23HCbpvvKbmxWxeVoU9UAErcHcJF.k77AKPjE.f kNHvkTvXC9GDmmVDeUDCc7BCYkNFOpPY6qdBe6u9j79vvhzCjWy51oF2nxHw bq6AnHP8AYf9wX7QY4ufEg6PXpMymjfxR Received: from [99.92.108.41] by web81302.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:09 PDT X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/567 YahooMailWebService/0.8.111.303096 References: Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 06:54:09 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: Re: [lojban] "lo no" To: lojban@googlegroups.com In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Original-Sender: kali9putra@yahoo.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 66.94.236.141 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=kali9putra@yahoo.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@yahoo.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: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 "is a flying tea pot" can indeed be said of nothing, i.e., "There are no flying teapots" is a perfectly sensible (and true, I think) sentence. What can't happen (in Lojban anyhow) is that a description referring essentially to flying teapots, e.g., {lo [flying teapot]}, can fail to have a referent. The use of the expression (with some restrictions -- e.g. not in an abstraction) guarantees that such an object is in the universe of discourse. Indeed, the first use of the expression puts it there, if it wasn't there already. That has nothing to do, however, with whether such things exist (are truly an x1 of {zaste} [still flying blind]). Assuming that flying teapots do not exist, how many there are is hard to determine, since any positive integer is compatible with the situation (of course, it is hard to determine even if flying teapots do exist, since there may be non-existent flying teapots as well). ["cardinals other than zero" is, of course, definable -- you just did -- but after a certain point it is unclear what its members are exactly, e.g, what aleph-one is, other than the cardinality of the first ordinal greater than aleph-zero] ----- Original Message ---- From: tijlan To: lojban@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 6:35:20 AM Subject: Re: [lojban] "lo no" On 16 May 2011 13:13, Michael Turniansky wrote: > No, I am not asking you to arbitrarily make one up. I am asking you 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. > > 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". > > There's no such grammatical contruct, no nai = PA NAI or PA UI = PA* http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=zasni+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 -- 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@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. 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