RE: [jboske] gadri

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Nick:
> A substance is loi tu'o broda
> Individuals, collectives, and substances of collectives are all loi 
> tu'o ro broda
> I think the collective vs. substance of collective conflation is bogus, 
> because a substance of collective can *still* be phrased as loi tu'o 
> broda; and such second step abstractions are pragmatically more like 
> loi tu'o loi ro broda, if you're going to put quantifiers in there. 
> (Yes, that's grammatical.)

The reason I said it is "substance of collective" is that the absence
of inner tu'o gives it its collectivehood, but the rule the properties
of the parts inherit to the whole -- if that it not merely a function
of the outer pisu'o -- makes it more like a substance.

My problem in contributing more authoritatively to the debate is that
it requires a Jordanic knowledge of Scripture. It's not enough to just
think about the problem rationally.

At any rate, John's *intent* was that there is no context-independent
logic of jbomasses, and if that is at all definitive then {piroloiro}
could be reasonably safely said to do collective.

> It is distressingly clear that Lojban is shortchanged of any tools to 
> distinguish between collectives and substances, and I'll settle even 
> for gismu at this stage 

{loi tu'o} does substances.
{lo tu'o} presumably does a countable amount of universal-grindee.
{lo PAmei} does countable collectives.
{piroloiro}, {pirolu'o} probably do uncountable collectives.

In other words, {tu'o} erases the boundaries between members.
{lo} gives you countability. {loi} gives you uncountability.
Adding {piro} before {loi} makes sure you are actually referring
to {loi} and not to {pisu'oloi}.

So... I think your wish is granted....

> 2. lo'e
> 
> The candidate senses are: Statistical (e.g. mode), Prototype (mental 
> definition), and Unique. The founders (addled once more) seem to have 
> preferred Prototype (which matches stereotype), I've retracted 
> Statistical, and And has retracted Unique (apparently), so this is 
> resolved 
>
> A secondary issue is whether anything inherited can be predicated of 
> lo'e: do you study or draw lo'e cinfo, or is that only meaningful as a 
> definitional trait? To keep our sanity, the latter 

It has to be the latter. Otherwise it is broken.

> 3. Unique
> 
> And has fumbled this badly, as he will himself admit, but people are 
> slowly starting to see the point to this construct. It was begotten of 
> kludgery, and pressed into service to solve everything, but it is 
> handy. It is a generic like the prototype. making an individual of a 
> population by regarding the actual individuals of the population 
> instantiations of the one underlying individual 
> 
> By speaking of Lions that are all underlyingly the same lion, And had 
> made his interlocutors dispute his sanity. Speaking of Mondays, or the 
> New York Times --- things we are used to abstracting an underlying 
> individual out of instances --- would have helped him rather more. The 
> Unique is an individuated version of the Kind (as in "I own that kind 
> of car", treating all Porsches as the one thing), which treats the 
> population as a single entity. As such, it corresponds to many an 
> English use of the generic 
> 
> This looks headed for its own LAhE 

I wonder whether:

lo du be ro broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda

would suffice (by the criteria that the BF uses to judge sufficiency)?

> 4. Intensional article
> 
> We may or may not need one 
[...] 
> If we accept that le broda need not have a referent in this world (so 
> we can speak of {le fipni'u} or {le xavlerfu gismu} meaningfully}, then 
> {le} is already non-commital as to whether its referent exists in this 
> world or not, by virtue of its nonveridicality. What would serve as an 
> intensional article then would be a counterpart to {le}, with no 
> specificity. And would invent a new paradigm of gadri; I would be 
> rather happier with a UI kludge 
> 
> And says that Unique is not veridical either. It is true that in 
> English we would say "Lions live in Africa" and "Elves live in Mordor". 
> But I think the assumption that prototypes and Uniques in Lojban are 
> non-veridical is rash 

Of late I have thought that Unique is veridical in the sense that
it can be done as {lo du be ro (lu'a) (lo'i)/le'i/la'i broda}.

I think we can simulate intensionals (that would cope with cases
where lV'i broda is empty) as:

le du be ro broda
le du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
le du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda

NB This message is meant as a contribution to SL not to AL. IOW,
the issue is "Can SL express the notion?", not "What means of
expressing this notion would satisfy our needs?".

--And.