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

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 11 May 2011 18:24, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It does make an assertion and impart information, yes, and that
>> assertion and information are incompatible in the way you formed the
>> expression, "lo no gerku cu xekri". What is your assertion about? "lo
>> gerku". You want to ascribe the property "none of which are black".
>
>
> NO!!!!  I do NOT want to make that assertion!  Please stop putting words in
> my mouth!  I was very explicit which assertion I was making.  That there are
> NO dogs!  PERIOD!
>  I explicitly stated that it does NOT "impart any other
> information that it might on the surface appear to"

You had clearly intended to ascribe the property "none of which are
black" to the dogs:

On 10 May 2011 15:48, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> we know no matter how many there are, none of them are black.

And you had explicitly stated that you can "truthfully say "lo no
gerku cu xekri"":

On 9 May 2011 20:44, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>   I don't believe "lo no gerku cu blabi" to be self contradictory/nonsense.
>   Consider a room containing three white dogs -- lo ci gerku cu blabi
>   I take one away -- lo re gerku cu blabi
>   I take another away -- lo pa gerku cu blabi
>   I take the last one away -- lo no gerku cu blabi
>   Of course, when I take the last one away, I can equally truthfully say "lo
> no gerku cu xekri".

You can truthfully say "none of them are black", but probably not in this way:

lo no gerku ... = [ da poi gerku je nomei ] or more precisely [ da poi
gerku poi nomei ] ...

Reason 1: You aren't making reference to the white non-black dogs by
which the truth of "none of them are black" can be inferred.
Reason 2: You can't sensibly mean to refer to something which is-dog
which is-none.

But you can sensibly pick none of something which is-dog:

no lo gerku = no [ da poi gerku ]


> The only assertion I WANT to make is that there are no dogs.

Then:

no da gerku
no (lo) gerku cu zvati / zasti
...

"lo no gerku cu blabi" from your own comment not only is unnecessary
for your own aim stated above (since it imparts more information than
"there are no dogs"), but also seems unsound.

Or do you want to assert also that "the white dogs aren't in the
room", as more proper to the actual context of your example of "a room
and three white dogs"?


mu'o

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