From lojban+bncCJ2UzZHuDRCJppXzBBoELOoicA@googlegroups.com Mon Sep 05 15:54:13 2011 Received: from mail-vx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.220.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R0i3O-0002F6-45; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:13 -0700 Received: by vxh7 with SMTP id 7sf3363171vxh.16 for ; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:03 -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=W6Qxlzoy7FM1Cs4T4yp83rxFV8ju2/L51BVUlTfnFFo=; b=mxAyQgqBO6+h7weg/evDIYSjg5yE+8rvuDHWA1KEUrsADBdk5lFWciD+4YShT/HMR/ ryMR6TwgQSMq40eGLYPgvbrUBRtjNK1WhKLHw7R35ro4jFt/owLKnHaUxf9J5Q0qeZVp dCflDLfE1AzOg2niPs915PAimxWSjQ1lFC2qY= Received: by 10.220.180.138 with SMTP id bu10mr655367vcb.20.1315263241929; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.220.118.18 with SMTP id t18ls252870vcq.3.gmail; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.24.9 with SMTP id q9mr2138553vdf.26.1315263241140; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.24.9 with SMTP id q9mr2138552vdf.26.1315263241131; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-vw0-f43.google.com (mail-vw0-f43.google.com [209.85.212.43]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id f5si4566656vdu.1.2011.09.05.15.54.01 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of jjllambias@gmail.com designates 209.85.212.43 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.212.43; Received: by vws10 with SMTP id 10so7006792vws.16 for ; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:01 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.52.176.169 with SMTP id cj9mr317550vdc.117.1315263240999; Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:54:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.163.133 with HTTP; Mon, 5 Sep 2011 15:54:00 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20110904234703.GC30555@gonzales> References: <20110825090633.GC13699@gonzales> <20110825231909.GG13699@gonzales> <20110826105057.GH13699@gonzales> <20110902015636.GC3748@gonzales> <20110904195334.GB30555@gonzales> <20110904234703.GC30555@gonzales> Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 19:54:00 -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 209.85.212.43 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 Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Martin Bays wrote: > * Sunday, 2011-09-04 at 18:22 -0300 - Jorge Llamb=EDas : > >> Pre-xorlo "lo" was just a synonym of "su'o". There's not much point in >> having two words for the same quantifier. xorlo "lo" is not a >> quantifier, rather what it does is create a referring expression out >> of a predicate, and the only requirement is that the referent(s) of >> that expression satisfy that predicate. =A0 But what those referrents >> are will change from context to context. > > Right. But it's important that the range of possible/likely referents is > understood by the listener. If the convention is that individuals with > a priori bizarre properties, like Kinds or lo'e-typicals or any of the > various flavours of masses/groups/whatever, are plausible referents, > then this convention needs to be commonly understood. Do you think there's something bizarre about the properties of the referrent of the noun phrase "the listener" in your first sentence? I don't. I think that in the context of this conversation it is perfectly clear what you mean by "the listener". The same referrent would be a plausible referrent for "lo te cusku" if you had written the sentence in Lojban. The same can be said about most of the noun phrases you used in those two sentences. It's almost impossible to say anything without resorting to some level of abstraction. If you ask how many legs do humans have, what's the bizarre answer, "two" or "billions"? > Moreover, if the > properties of these magic individuals, or the conditions under which > they become plausible members of the domain of discourse, are not > ill-specified, then the semantics of the language is correspondingly > ill-specified. I don't really see anything magic about the referrents of "the listener" or of "humans" in the above examples. Using different levels of abstraction in different contexts seems to me like an ordinary use of language. > To repeat the problem which you seemed to be getting around by invoking > a varying domain of discourse: suppose I'm showing you my flea circus, > consisting of 100 fleas almost all of which are black, but which > contains a few freaks of other colours. Then the following exchange > seems reasonable, if we don't play tricks with domain of discourse and > treat generics just like other individuals: > > M: .o'a pa no no da vi cinki > X: za'a lo vi cinki cu xekri > M: .ua mi jifsku .i su'o pa no pa da vi cinki X's "lo vi cinki" could be understood as a generic or it could be understood as "lo [ci no no] vi cinki". I would go with the second, given the context of the first sentence. M's second sentence can only be understood as a joke. It's as if someone says "there are three things on the table: a book, a pen and a rubber duck" and someone else adds "No, you are wrong, you forgot to count the book's cover, the left side of the pen and the many thousands of dust particles that are also on the table, among many other things". Of course once you bring those things up, they are now in the domain of discourse and it's hard to get rid of them, but that doesn't make the first statement "false", it just makes the second person a nuisance. If you have counted 100 insects, then insects in general will not count as a new insect. In fact when the 100 insects are already part of the domain of discourse if you want to talk about them and that kind of insects at the same time you need to say something like "this kind of insects" where "these insects" would suffice in other contexts. >> "...pu ta'e citka lo figre" vs. "... pu co'i >> citka lo figre". > > Right, but using tenses like this only works for the John case - unless > you want to redefine the tense system to apply to "stages" as well as > times... is that really what you're doing? I think we are using the term "stages" differently. For me an individual like John has stages: "two-year-old John" for example is a stage of John, who is not permanently two years old. The analogy I mentioned was between wholistic individuals with their stages and Kinds with their manifestations (and it's an analogy, not a perfect correspondence in all respects). In fact Kinds can have stages too, in a different dimension than the one where they have manifestations. "Before 10,000 years ago, horses were widespread in North America, Asia, and Europe. The population crash that exterminated them in North America hit them everywhere." "Being widespread in North America" is similarly not a permanent property of horses, it's a property of one of its stages, and it's not a property of any of its manifestations. In the case of manifestations, we might do better with "spatial tenses" like "fe'e ta'e" if "ta'e" by itself can only be taken strictly in a temporal sense. Or maybe this has something to do with the elusive distinction between "ta'e" and "na'o". >> Plain "citka lo figre" would probably have to remain ambiguous between >> at least those two. > > Based on this and some other things in this mail, I'm taking you as > saying that you want this to hold also when John is replaced by {lo > gerku} read generically, though this seems not to accord with your > answer to me question about dogs being small and hungry (a question > I asked precisely for the purpose of probing whether you wanted this > predicate-based ambiguity! But I guess that was unclear). Could you > confirm that I'm now reading you right? i.e. if {lo broda} is read > generically in {lo broda cu brode}, then the latter is ambiguous between > saying that some "stage" of {lo broda} brodes, and saying that the > generic itself brodes - the truth conditions for which are unclear, but > probably have something to do with typicality. In "lo broda cu brode", it is always lo broda which brodes. If horses are found in N.A., it is horses that are found in N.A., even if for this particular predicate it is also (and necessarily) the case that some (and probably not all) of its manifestations must be found there, just as when John is sitting on a chair, it is John who is sitting on the chair, even if for this particular predicate it is also (and necessarily) the case that some (and probably not all) of its stages are sitting on the chair. What we can say about the manifestations/stages of something when that something satisfies a certain predicate will depend on the predicate. But it's an inferrence we make from the original claim about the something, it is not what the original claim was about. >> What I'm saying is that it's (similar to) the usual semantics of the >> English bare plural, at least as analysed by Carlson. > > So you read {so'e pemci cu se finti lo na'e pemfi'i} as > MOST (x:poem(x)). EX (s:[s is a stage of {lo na'e pemfi'i}]. finti(s,x) > ? If I understand Carlson correctly, that's what it can be transformed into, not what it translates into. > So if I were to say, out of the blue, {da finti ro pemci}, what would > you make of it? Would you think I was making the innocuous claim > regarding generics, It doesn't have to be completely innocuous. You could be making the point that poems don't just appear out of thin air. But I think I would tend to interpret it as you claiming that God, or some other such entity, was the true creator behind all poems, maybe some claim about inspiration. > or that I was crazy, or that I was referring to > a special form of poem which does indeed have only one author? Most > importantly: how would I disambiguate to indicate that I really mean > "someone wrote all poems"? "su'o prenu cu finti ro pemci" would do, since using "su'o" when your domain of quantification is a single entity would surely violate some conversational maxims even if it can be said to be true. 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.