On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 03:04:42PM -0800, mudri wrote:
> Please don't groan about what must be another xorlo question.
I also keep asking/discussing and some others do as well, so
probably nobody will do that. {.u'i}
> I was reading http://www.lojban.org/tiki/How+to+use+xorlo again, and came
> across these two sentences: “In my post-xorlo writings, lo outnumbers le by
> about three to one (at a guess). I only use le when I'm talking about a
> specific item.”. To me, those seem at odds. The first bullet point after
> this implies that the “only” here is being used for effect, rather than
> logic, so I'm still stuck.
Why?
> I would assume that specific objects are talked
> about as frequently, if not more so, than generic descriptions. At least on
> Twitter, where most of my writing practice happens, this seems to be the
> case.
Yes and I agree.
If you find yourself using {le} more often, this is no problem at all.
For me, I would assume, it's fifty-fifty.
There are a rather large number of cases, where the choice between {le} and {lo}
depends on what you want to say _very accurately_ and therefore is a matter of
preferences...
Some, like selpa'i, argue that {lo} does not _exclude_ specificity and can therefore
always be used in place of {le} (see his reply). In these cases
it's left up to context whether or not something specific is meant.
Others, like me, argue that it is important/useful to have a way of
refering to a specific thing - and might not even describe it accurately -
_in text_ rather than context. {lo} doesn't provide this.
One problem about the usage of {le} is, I suppose, the internet.
People often don't have enough common ground here to refer to
specific things, which might be described inaccurately.
If you use {le} and it's not clear what you're refering to,
you're more than unhelpful and violating conversation principles,
because people can't fix a proper reference.
For social platforms and real-life talk this is probably less of a problem.
v4hn
Attachment:
pgpmWyBONo9AD.pgp
Description: PGP signature