From lojban+bncCJ2UzZHuDRCH29vyBBoE48nGtA@googlegroups.com Thu Aug 25 17:49:24 2011 Received: from mail-vx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.220.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Qwkbo-0001Il-KA; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:23 -0700 Received: by vxh2 with SMTP id 2sf1862241vxh.16 for ; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:14 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version: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:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=KFHYS4IRP4ElMSIK1BS9ltt13jVj/8WQrTjAoIXufGY=; b=VTU3akSOuU4aBrSActxuWNzh37tQ9bd7t4UhG0lsyfMWLacIKtKnQJxCY8idroIHZ/ xyiE1h8QTpGsmCU8UQ1sPDIFug75ezwohu1phT9TSokIb6dwIJZZpjhdWgEKF2iyYxiT qtBpXrA+ocvgJ5cqP83dEGDyIVnmkKSP7Zt4Q= Received: by 10.220.150.198 with SMTP id z6mr132921vcv.35.1314319751687; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:11 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.52.161.134 with SMTP id xs6ls674912vdb.0.gmail; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.173.101 with SMTP id bj5mr429780vdc.21.1314319750942; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.173.101 with SMTP id bj5mr429778vdc.21.1314319750932; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-vx0-f176.google.com (mail-vx0-f176.google.com [209.85.220.176]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ch3si1618430vdc.2.2011.08.25.17.49.10 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:10 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of jjllambias@gmail.com designates 209.85.220.176 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.220.176; Received: by vxh17 with SMTP id 17so2307222vxh.7 for ; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:10 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.52.22.132 with SMTP id d4mr489022vdf.318.1314319750760; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.169.38 with HTTP; Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:49:07 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20110825231909.GG13699@gonzales> References: <20110820195330.GB19624@SDF.ORG> <20110822102301.GA24775@SDF.ORG> <20110823230437.GC19213@gonzales> <20110824154151.GA3105@gonzales> <20110825090633.GC13699@gonzales> <20110825231909.GG13699@gonzales> Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:49:07 -0300 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?= To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: jjllambias@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of jjllambias@gmail.com designates 209.85.220.176 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=jjllambias@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: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 8:19 PM, Martin Bays wrote: > * Thursday, 2011-08-25 at 19:11 -0300 - Jorge Llamb=EDas : >> On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 6:06 AM, Martin Bays wrote: >> > >> > Firstly: there is the question of whether Kinds are in our domain of >> > quantification. >> >> My answer is that sometimes they are and sometimes they are not, >> depending on what "our domain of quantification" happens to be at the >> time. > > Meaning that quantification can be over ordinary individuals, and it can > be over Kinds, but it can't be over a mixture of the two? Not exactly. I think kinds are just as ordinary as any other individual. It's not a binary distinction. > So our > universe has multiple sorts, and {ro da} can be quantifying over any one > of them - but only one at a time? I'd be happy with that, and it seems > to deal with your "two favourite desserts" issue. > > It would be nice to have a way of explicitly indicating that > quantification is over usual individuals and not Kinds. But "usual individuals" is just whatever can be the value or values of a variable. In some contexts there is and can be one and only one letter "e". In some other contexts there can be two and only two (written "e" and "E".) In other contexts there can be many, but such that there are only two in the word "letter". Even if I write "letter" and "letter" twice, that one word has two "e"'s. But then in another context, when it's two words that I wrote, there are four "e"'s that I wrote. And perhaps if we count not just the two words I wrote but the (tens? hundreds?) of computer screens those words I wrote have appeared in, we may have to admit that there are hundreds of 'e's that have been read. I don't see how we can reduce all that to just two levels. > I'd say that {da > poi du} would do that (or {da poi zilmintu} if we want {du} to be > magic), as long as we ignore Kinds made from singletons. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to think of kinds as being made of something. > You mention below "[not] just two levels of abstraction, concrete and > abstract, but lots and lots of levels with different degree of > abstraction"; could this mean more sorts? If so, what are you thinking > of? I guess you could have Kinds of Kinds, though maybe that's more > trouble than it's worth... It may be trouble, but I think it's inevitable. I think making generalizations and particularizations is an ordinary part of language, and it is not limited to two levels. >> Would you object to "natural numbers are equal to something (namely >> themselves)" > > No, but I don't see how to analyse it with generics - I'd say that's > a clear case of quantification, i.e. that it's > {ro da poi mulna'u cu du de ne da}. You don't agree with Carlson's analysis of the English bare plural then. I think he presents a very good argument that a unified analysis makes more sense than thinking that it is sometimes the plural of "a(n)" and sometimes a universal/generic. > You can't say > "something (namely themselves) is/are equal to natural numbers" How about "One thing are natural numbers and some other thing are rational numbers". > (the problem isn't the pronoun position - you can say > "something (namely itself) is equal to any natural number" > ) I think "something is/are natural numbers" is weird due to the difficulty in making any sense of why someone would want to say something like that. "Something is a dog" is almost as strange, and there we don't have to fight against the plural morphology. >> and "poets write some poems, but most poems are written by non-poets"? > > I don't think 'poets' is a generic there, any more than 'non-poets' is. Carlson would disagree. (Or rather,I think he would say that bare plurals are always the same thing, I'm not sure he would call it a generic.) >> But I want to be able to say "dogs have been known to eat carrots" >> even when the set { (x,y) | dog(x) /\ carrot(y) /\ eat(x,y) } does not >> seem to be Large in { (x,y) | dog(x) /\ carrot(y) } > > Again, I don't think 'carrots' is a generic there. > > Actually, doesn't it just mean > {se zgana lo nu su'o gerku su'o najgenja cu citka}? > If not, what did you mean by it and how would you like to Lojbanise it? Maybe something along the lines of: va'o su'o da lo gerku cu citka lo najgenka "Under some circumstances, dogs will eat carrots." Much like: va'o du'o da la djan tavla la alis "Under some circumstances, John will talk to Alice." I would not bring in time slices of John and time slices of Alice in order to interpret that sentence. > More generally, could you indicate (however vaguely) what you think the > truth conditions for {lo'e broda lo'e brodi cu brodu} should be? I'm not really sure about "lo'e", but for "lo broda lo brodi cu brodu", just the same as for any other "ko'a ko'e broda". I just don't think that "lo broda" fixes by itself any level of abstraction. 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.