From lojban+bncCOTEtqyUDhDAro_zBBoEl_l2zw@googlegroups.com Sun Sep 04 12:53:49 2011 Received: from mail-pz0-f56.google.com ([209.85.210.56]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R0IlE-0005TM-L9; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:48 -0700 Received: by pzk33 with SMTP id 33sf10436601pzk.1 for ; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:38 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:content-type:content-disposition:in-reply-to:x-pgp-key :x-pgp-keyid:x-cunselcu'a-valsi:user-agent: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; bh=I+PVjTVa4YPaPK+Xt0TF3qmam9wGRfYuJXRuU/+aVWs=; b=ORO8GBJbS7CjJTVly2Ax9uqW0JtYKgIweP1FOM8QOrOHVhEBLIZDZQp0bMbV9FKezF JerQzwmdQo3i5Cn7qnoomjwEIwKFGVhsWrA3hr5bEtK6WYmERq2dIXSaPa55FVtJGMGj nAZDkVT8O7YkyWfqv+x5AchJ1+5j7Da6hOrOs= Received: by 10.68.51.226 with SMTP id n2mr233592pbo.70.1315166016639; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:36 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.68.33.194 with SMTP id t2ls7236678pbi.0.gmail; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.34.98 with SMTP id y2mr2052264pbi.24.1315166016067; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.34.98 with SMTP id y2mr2052263pbi.24.1315166016054; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sdf.lonestar.org (mx.sdf.org. [192.94.73.19]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id j4si7656585pbi.2.2011.09.04.12.53.35 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:53:35 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of mbays@sdf.org designates 192.94.73.19 as permitted sender) client-ip=192.94.73.19; Received: from gonzales.homelinux.org (root@sverige.freeshell.org [192.94.73.4]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.14.4/8.14.3) with ESMTP id p84JrZnC008291 for ; Sun, 4 Sep 2011 19:53:35 GMT Received: from martin by gonzales.homelinux.org with local (Exim 4.75) (envelope-from ) id 1R0Il4-0004XE-RH for lojban@googlegroups.com; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:53:34 -0400 Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 15:53:34 -0400 From: Martin Bays To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses Message-ID: <20110904195334.GB30555@gonzales> References: <20110824154151.GA3105@gonzales> <20110825090633.GC13699@gonzales> <20110825231909.GG13699@gonzales> <20110826105057.GH13699@gonzales> <20110902015636.GC3748@gonzales> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="i0/AhcQY5QxfSsSZ" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-PGP-Key: http://mbays.freeshell.org/pubkey.asc X-PGP-KeyId: B5FB2CD6 X-cunselcu'a-valsi: lante User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Original-Sender: mbays@sdf.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of mbays@sdf.org designates 192.94.73.19 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=mbays@sdf.org 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: , --i0/AhcQY5QxfSsSZ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable * Friday, 2011-09-02 at 19:17 -0300 - Jorge Llamb=EDas : > On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Martin Bays wrote: > > * Friday, 2011-08-26 at 19:15 -0300 - Jorge Llamb=EDas : > >> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Martin Bays wrote: > >> > But wouldn't you agree that the domain of discourse should be mostly > >> > static? > >> I think it needs to be mostly dynamic. (Don't ask me for a full theory > >> of dynamic how, but I think the static assumption only works for > >> interpreting small chunks of language at a time.) > > > > Oh. But then is a model-theoretic formal semantics of any use at all? >=20 > I'm not sure about it being of use, but it would certainly be nice to > have a complete formal semantics for Lojban. Obviously we are nowhere > near that. Quite. Fragments of it are easy enough to treat - in particular, a sizable fragment translates directly to usual first-order predicate logic. Pre-xorlo, {lo} was part of that fragment. I'd like to understand what modifications to the semantics are required to handle xor{lo}. But what I meant was that you seemed to be upsetting the very foundations of a model-theoretic formal semantics - that we can judge truthhood of statements against a fixed model (fixed at least throughout a sentence, whether or not throughout the whole discourse). I hope this isn't necessary. > >> >> >> and "poets write some poems, but most poems are written by non-p= oets"? > >> >> > > >> >> > I don't think 'poets' is a generic there, any more than 'non-poet= s' 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.) > >> > Hmm. I think he would call 'poets' and 'non-poets' indefinite plural= s, > >> > and analyse them as existentially quantified > >> > instances/realisations/stages of the corresponding Kinds (as in sect= ion > >> > 4.2 of the paper you reffed). > >> Read again the paragraph beginning "But here I seem to be arguing the > >> contrary of what I have argued for at length a bit earlier [...] the > >> remainder of this work is devoted to the resolution of this > >> contradictory state of affairs." The resolution is that the > >> existential quantifier ends up being buried within the predicate, not > >> in the bare plural term. The predicate "... writes some poems" becomes > >> something like "/xEy[R(x,y)&writes-some-poems(y)", while "poets" > >> translates as "/PP(p)". > >> > >> And this works because, as Carlson points out, bare plurals are never > >> actually ambiguous as to what reading they should be given. The > >> predicate normally selects for which reading is the one called for, > >> and when it doesn't it's because the predicate itself is ambiguous, as > >> can be shown with the same predicate acting on non-bare plural > >> arguments. > > > > Yes, but you don't want this to translate directly to Lojban, do you? >=20 > I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "this" here. The ambiguity being in the predicate rather than the sumti. > My Lojban translation for "poets write some poems, but most poems are > written by non-poets" might be something like: "lo pemfi'i cu finti > su'o pemci .i ku'i so'e pemci cu se finti lo na'e pemfi'i" Right. So that wouldn't work with lo giving 'the typical', nor with it giving some individuals as a constant - so this kind of Kind really is something new. And its semantics are only getting more and more alien to me as you give more examples... For a while, I thought your generics might be something like elements in an elementary extension, i.e. that adding them doesn't change the truth value of any sentence (or maybe: of any sentence which is short enough and doesn't use any too high numbers (so we can add generics to large finite sets)). But now it seems you would want that {ro pemci cu se finti lo finti}. So {da finti ro pemci} becomes true on adding this generic. > > E.g. 'poets' couldn't be {lo'e pemfinti} in the above, could it? >=20 > I can't say much about "lo'e" because I don't know what it means. If > it has anything to do with typicalness, as the gloss suggests, then > no, I don't think it would work there. If it only indicates that the > sumti must be given a generic referent, similar to Carlson's analysis > of the bare plural, I see no problem. >=20 > > Or if you don't believe in {lo'e}, make the question: could {lo gerku cu > > cmalu gi'e xagji} be translated as "dogs are small and some dogs are > > hungry"? >=20 > I don't think so, where would the "some" have come from? It would have > to be one of the options in: "(The) dog(s) is/are/(was/were/...) small > and hungry". Probably I should have said "dogs are small and the dogs are hungry". This isn't in your list of possibilities. Just to check - was that deliberate? > I would go with "the dogs are small and hungry" without any context. > It would be interesting to figure out why "dogs are small and hungry" > is so hoplessly bad. Maybe because "hungry" is a stage property and > "small" is not (at least not in the same scale of stages). >=20 > >> >> but for "lo broda lo brodi cu > >> >> brodu", just the same as for any other "ko'a ko'e broda". I just do= n't > >> >> think that "lo broda" fixes by itself any level of abstraction. > >> > > >> > So you think we should just consider it as another part of the ineff= able > >> > and irreducible semantics of brodu? > >> > >> It doesn't have to be ineffable and irreducible, but yes, I think it > >> makes more sense to shift the focus of the analysis there. > > > > If it isn't irreducible, could you indicate at all how you'd do that > > analysis? >=20 > I suspect that the aspect (implicit or explicit) on the predicate > would play a crucial role. Also the type of property, if it's a > property that applies to its argument as a whole or only through a > temporal stage, and things like that. The latter would be part of the > lexical entry for that predicate. This is similar to the way that the > meaning of a predicate will determine whether a distributive or > collective reading on its argument will be more likely. Sorry I can't > give a full blown theory. Now I'm even more confused. Do you mean that there are *two ways* in which {lo plise cu farlu} could be analysed as saying that some (particular) apples are falling - the first being where {lo plise} is read as referring to some apples and {farlu} as a distributive predicate, and the second being where {lo plise} is read as a generic, and {farlu} is read as applying to some stages of this generic? Or do you want to combine these two into one? Perhaps with lo *always* returning a generic? Or something else? > >> I would say: "lo remna cu se tuple re da". > > > > You... would? Even though you'd have it being equivalent to > > {re da zo'u lo remna cu tuple da}? What are the two solutions for {da}? >=20 > The right leg and the left one. (Or right legs and left legs) At this > level of abstraction, where "lo remna" has a single (generic) > referent, there are two referents for human legs. (I think this is the same kind of issue as that addressed by the 'poems' example above (namely: how generics work with functions, or near-functions), so I'll let this be for now) Martin --i0/AhcQY5QxfSsSZ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk5j1z4ACgkQULC7OLX7LNbphgCg0HQfqa1u64YxVmJ+5L28nDwc U2AAniWjsBiq4w/K40JLa1owwuLfbBE2 =JcwO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --i0/AhcQY5QxfSsSZ--