[lojban-beginners] Re: spofu pemci

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 02:07:29PM -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> On 3/15/07, Turniansky, Michael <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > "LE broda cu brode GI'A brodi vau LE brodo" => "LE broda
> >cu brode LE brodo .i JA LE broda cu brodi LE brood"  (do I have
> >THAT right, at least??)
> 
> I would say yes, but I'm almost sure I could find people who
> disagree.

I agree, although I expect to disagree with you about tanru JA (see
another post).

> Let's consider a concrete example:
> 
> 1a)  lo cinfo cu nakni gi'e femti
> 1b)  Lions are male and female.
> 
> 2a)  lo cinfo cu nakni .ije lo cinfo cu femti
> 2b)  Lions are male and lions are female.
> 
> For me, (1a) and (2a) say the same thing (and the English (1b) and
> (2b) also say that same thing). What they say is relatively vague,
> at least if compared with the more precise quantified forms:

Only under xorlo, which, your regular un-labelled usage aside, still
isn't formally part of the language.

> 3a)  ro cinfo cu nakni gi'e femti
> 3b)  All lions are male and female.
> 
> 4a)  ro cinfo cu nakni .ije ro cinfo cu femti
> 4b)  All lions are male and all lions are female.
> 
> 5a)  su'o cinfo cu nakni gi'e femti
> 5b)  Some lions are male and female.
> 
> 6a)  su'o cinfo cu nakni .ije su'o cinfo cu femti
> 6b)  Some lions are male and some lions are female.
> 
> Notice that (3) and (4) happen to mean the same thing (because the
> quantifier {ro} and the connective {gi'e} can change their
> relative scope without changing meaning), but (5) and (6) mean
> very different things (because {ro} and {gi'a} cannot change their
> relative scope without a change of meaning).

You mean {gi'e}.

Huh.  I thought that the *definition* of {gi'e} is that it is
meaning-equivalent to the {.i je} version.  This turns out to not
exactly be the case; the CLL says that all connectives (except
certain tanru-internal cases) can be transformed into *some* {.i JA}
case, but not how to do it.  Interesting.

I assert, in apparent agreement with you, that {su'o cinfo cu nakni
gi'e femti} == {su'o da poi cinfu zo'u da nakni .i je da femti}, and
that that is false, and different from 6.

> (3)=(4), and (5) are clearly false. (6) is clearly true.
> 
> (1) and (2) are more vague, but I would say they are true. If
> someone says (1) or (2) you may want to ask for more precision,
> just in case. Some people think that Lojban cannot tolerate this
> kind of vagueness, so they will either not agree with me that (1a)
> and (1b) mean the same thing, or they will not agree that they can
> be true.

Under xorlo, I agree.  As usual, I'm uspet that you've used xorlo
(on the beginner's list, no less!) without tagging it as such.
Please be more careful.

-Robin

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