[lojban-beginners] Re: ci lo gerku vs lo ci gerku

[ranoritc <ranorith@gmail.com>]

ionai la xorlo na'e ciste fi lo selklani po zo lo i ni'i la'edi'u lu
lo gerku cu blabi li'u selsmuni lu lo no gerku cu blabi li'u xu i si'a
selsmuni lu lo piso'a gerku cu blabi li'u xu i si'a selsmuni lu lo
mo'a gerku cu blabi li'u zo'o i selbebna .i

Ranorith

Yuck, I really hate how xorlo specifies that lo "has no default
quantifiers". Does that mean if I say "lo gerku cu blabi" this is a
fine generalisation of "lo no gerku cu blabi"? What about "lo piso'a
gerku cu blabi"? Or perhaps "lo mo'a gerku cu blabi"? So silly.

mu'omi'e ranoritc

On May 1, 2:33 am, Jorge Llambías <jjllamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:17 AM, tijlan <jbotij...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, xorlo has no default quantifier. But then does "lo ci gerku"
> > really mean "*all three* of the dogs that we are talking about"?
>
> "lo ci gerku" can be used to refer to anything that fits the x1 of
> gerku and whose number is three:
>
> lo ci gerku = zo'e noi ke'a gerku gi'e klani li ci
>
> > According to xorlo, {lo} isn't supposed to have any default
> > quantifier, including "at least one". "How to use xorlo" translates it
> > as "something(s) or other to do with broda".
>
> "How to use xorlo" says some odd things, so don't take it too
> seriously. I don't see how "lo gerku" could be used to refer to a
> dog's collar for example, which would fit the "something or other to
> do with dogs". It seems to me that "lo gerku" can only be used, and
> everybody only uses it, to refer to dogs.
>
> The outer quantifier changes nothing about what "lo ci gerku" refers
> to, it only says how many of the referents satisfy some selbri:
>
> no lo ci gerku cu blabi
> pa lo ci gerku cu blabi
> re lo ci gerku cu blabi
> ro lo ci gerku cu blabi
> su'o lo ci gerku cu blabi
> me'i lo ci gerku cu blabi
>
> In all of those cases, we are still referring to three dogs. The outer
> quantifier says how many of them are white, but the reference is still
> to three dogs.
>
> Now someone will ask what "lo ci gerku cu blabi" means without an
> outer quantifier. My answer is that in this case it is *probably*
> saying that "ro lo ci gerku cu blabi", but not because of some rule of
> grammar or logic but because of how things work in the world with
> respect to dogs being white. We usually say of three dogs that they
> are white only if each of them is white, but this is not a rule that
> applies to all things and all predicates. We don't require each dog to
> be white all over either, we may allow for their tongues not being
> white and we still say that the dogs are white, we may allow for some
> non-white spots on their skin as long as they are not too noticeable
> and still say that the dogs are white, and so on. This has to do about
> how we determine whether something is white, and more specifically how
> dogs are white.
>
> There is no PA that fits this formula for all broda and all brode in
> all contexts:
>
>    lo broda cu brode => PA lo broda cu brode
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes

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