RE: [jboske] Subject: RE: lo/le definition

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

Nick:
> lo remna is an individual of humanity

Can I suggest we follow a practise of putting prescribed-default
quantifiers in () and inserting all quantifiers that would have 
to be glorked if omitted. That would help me tell whether you
mean {lo remna} is an individual of humanity or {pa lo ro remna}
(or even {pa lo pa remna}) is an indiv of humanity.

> lo rismi is an individual quantity of the mass of rice:
> = lo pisu'o loi tu'o rismi
> 
> remna is being treated as inherently-individual
> rismi is being treated as inherently-substance
[...]
> If this is heading towards saying that loi djacu and lo djacu are 
> both potential referents of da poi djacu, and *that* is why lo djacu 
> != da poi djacu, then I guess I can live with that. The metalanguage 
> of CLL is still stuck in an atomist universe, isn't it?

I had never assumed it was stuck in an atomist universe.

> ----
> 
> Now I don't know who I'm disagreeing with... 

You and I seem to be converging. 

We roughly agree that inner ro forces a countable interpretation and that
inner tu'o forces an uncountable interpretation. 
We agree that this potentially makes the lo/loi contrast redundant,
but we don't yet agree on how to reconcile this with the fact that
SL wants to use lo/loi to mark countability.

We roughly agree that {da poi broda} is neutral between {LO(I) tu'o 
broda} and {LO(I) ro broda}. If {lo} forces a countable interpretation
than {lo} can't be equivalent to {da poi}. If {lo} doesn't force
a countable interpretation then it can be equivalent to {da poi}.

One problem that I see is that in {le/lo pisu'o loi tu'o rismi}
and {le/lo pisu'o lo ro remna}, le/lo is trying to do two
orthogonal things at once. On the one hand it is trying to indicate
+/-specific. On the other hand, it seems -- in your scheme -- to
also be trying to mark countability. It can't do both at the
same time. You might say that it does do both at the same time,
because lo/le do countables and loi/lei do uncountables, but in
that case {pisu'o loi tu'o rismi} needs to be read as {loi pisu'o
loi tu'o rismi}.

In 3rd ExSol a single countable amount of rice is {lo/le pa rismi}.
{lo/le pisu'o lo tu'o rismu} is a +/-specific uncountable fraction
of the mass of all rice -- but the uncountability comes from the vague 
number su'o, and {lo/le pici lo tu'o rismu} is a +/-specific third of 
the mass of all rice. IOW, {lo/le pisu'o} is neutral wrt countability
and making the distinction would involve {lo/le pa vei ci si'e
be lo tu'o rismi} versus {lo/le tu'o vei ci si'e be lo tu'o rismi}
(I'm guessing that vei is what is needed here -- correct it as
necessary). 

--And.