[lojban-beginners] Re: sets are rare?

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Squark Rabinovich<top.squark@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Several times I have encountered the claim that lojban sets are rarely used.

Personally, I don't use them at all.

> This appears strange to me, for the following reason. Certain gismu , such
> as cmima , simxu and probably others expect a set for an arguments.

Yes, several gismu definitions do that. I just ignore it because it
never adds anything to the meaning, all it does is force an
unnecessary level of clumsiness for saying certain things.

> For
> instance, I was trying to translate into lojban "We teach each other". The
> result was
> lu'i mi'o simxu le nu ctuca
> The lu'i is needed here to transform the mass mi'o into the set needed for
> simxu . Without it, the meaning would be something like "each of us is a set
> the elements of which teach each other".

To get "each of us" it would have to be "ro mi'o", "mi'o" by itself
does not force a distributive meaning. But yes, if we take the
definition as written, we would be saying that we are a set, which
obviously we are not, we are people. I prefer to adapt the definition
to "x1 (plural) mutually do x2", and skip sets altogether.

> So, why are sets rarely used?

Another advantage of ignoring sets is that you can say things like:

mi'o simxu lo nu ctuca kei gi'e cilre so'i da
We teach one another and learn many things.

You couldn't coordinate "simxu" with "cilre" if one required a set and
the other required people in the x1.

mu'o mi'e xorxes