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From: Robert Baruch <autophile@zoominternet.net>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
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Subject: [lojban-beginners] Q about general statements
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:35:11 -0400
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Hi all,

I'm totally n00b at Lojban. I'm hoping someone has some advice!

I'd like to state that "Cities are in countries." I'm pretty sure this  
statement is logically meant to say that every particular instance of  
a city is a member of one and only one country.  Maybe I'm making a  
mountain out of a molehill and there's some easy way to say this, but  
here's my thought process:

I've been puzzling through chapter 6 of the reference grammar. At  
first I started off with "loi tcadu cu cmima ??? gugde." but the  
description of "loi" says that this really means "some". The example  
shown is loi cinfo cu xabju le fi'ortu'a. = Lions dwell in Africa, but  
then it goes on to say that this statement says nothing about ALL lions.

lo'e doesn't seem to work either, because again, that refers to a  
typical something, and doesn't include ALL somethings.

Next we come to "ro", which means all-of, so "ro le tcadu...": all-of  
the-ones-described-as cities... but that still doesn't quite say what  
I want: "All cities are in countries" doesn't imply a bidirectional n- 
to-1 relationship (If Paris is a city, and all cities are in  
countries, then Paris is in countries -- exists in multiple countries  
at once.)

Okay, the next section seems promising, in that it lists je'abo, that  
which indeed is. So "je'abo le tcadu cu cmima...": That-which-indeed- 
is one-described-as-a city is a member of...

But I'm having trouble with "one and only one country". "pa le gugde",  
one something-described-as-a country" again doesn't imply the  
bidirectional relationship I'm looking for.

Halp?

Thanks,

la rab,rt.