[lojban-beginners] Re: Now what?

["Turniansky, Michael" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

> But in the real world, unless I am writing about alternate universes,
I 
> have only one specific Canada in mind - so surely it must be "le 
> kadnygu'e"?

First off, emember that both "le" and "lo" do not of and by themselves
denote or connote any number (although before xorlo is adopted, lo by
itself does means "at least one".  "le cribe" can mean "the (thing I
desribe as) bear" or "the (things I describe as) bears" and "lo cribe"
means "a (thing that really is) bear" or "some (things that really are)
bears". 

Now, take the example of if I was writing thirty years ago.  If I said,
"loi prenu pe lo dotygu'e cu tavla fo le dotybau"   ("The people of (one
or both) Germany(s) speak German") it would be true.  If I said, "so'e
lo prenu pe lo dotygu'e cu kaurpo'esi'opre"  ("Most of the people of
(one or both) Germany(s) are Communist"), it would STILL be true, even
though it is only true of one the Germanys, because I didn't specify I
was talking about only West Germany, or both Germanys together.  On the
other hand, if I said "loi prenu pe le dotygu'e cu kaurpo'esi'opre", now
I am specifically limiting the discussion to something I'm referring to
as Germany, which, if the rest of my thesis had been about West Germany,
would be a patently false statement.  So when you use "le" you have to
either specifically say what your "le" reefers to, or it has to be clear
from context. 

In the case of Canada, "le" would be fine, since there is only one you
could be talking about, unless you specifically mentioned the bizarre
context where there was another one.  But "lo" would ALSO be fine, since
again, there is only one.  But suppose you wanted to talk about the
current Canadian Parliament.  You would use "le kadnygu'e xelfla", but
if you wanted to say something one or more  Canadian Parliaments in
general such as "a Canadian Parliament is made up of people born after
1900", you would use "lo".  (You might use "loi", but that would imply
(if unqualified) the statement to be true of all Canidan Parliaments,
past, present and future, and it clearly is not).

> As far as "la kadnygu'e" is concerned, "kadnygu'e" would have to be a 
> name, but section 4.8 of the CLL says "Names may have almost any form,
but
> always end in a consonant".  So how can it be acceptable?

  Yes, a name (cmene) itself always ends in a consonant.  But "la" is
not restricted to cmene.  See chapter 6, examples 2.6-2.7 and the
surrounding text.

               --gejyspa  (And yes, articles are a slippery subject)