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Re: [lojban-beginners] Possessives
la tsani cu retsku di'e
> I'm joking far more than I'm serious in saying this, but considering
> that {lo djine} is a constant, wouldn't {la .djan. e la .djim. dunda
> lo djine la .meris.} mean that they each gave her *the same* ring :P ?
la gejyspa cu spusku di'e
Yes, I believe it would, although I don't know if xorlo affects
that. I didn't mean to say it wouldn't. The second sentence would be
one instance of giving (e.g they presented it to her together). But the
first sentence (to me) would still imply they both gave her a particular
ring (since it's only specified once), but they might have given it to
her at different times.
xorlo does and doesn't affect this. Prior to xorlo, lo djine = su'o lo
djine (with old-lo) = "at least one of all the rings there are".
With old-lo:
(1) la djan e la djim cu dunda [su'o] lo djine la meris
The ".e" has scope over "su'o", so both John and Jim give at least one
ring to Mary. It doesn't say that they give the same ring (and they
probably don't).
If you wanted both of them to give Mary the same ring, you'd have to
move the PA lo djine in front of the ".e" to fix the scope:
(2) pa da poi djine zo'u la djan e la djim cu dunda da la meris
"There exists [exactly] one ring, such that both John and jim give
it to Mary."
xorlo affects this in that it removes default quantifiers from all sumti
(except da), which means scope no longer plays a role when using a
description like "lo djine".
The vagueness remains in the xorlo version, however; It is not specified
if they both give the same ring to Mary or not in:
(3) la djan e la djim cu dunda lo djine la meris
All it says that they give a ring.
Again, a quantifier with scope over the ".e" can be introduced to have
both of them give the same ring to Mary as in (2).
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
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