In a message dated 7/4/2002 9:19:21 PM Central Daylight Time, lojban-out@lojban.org writes:The '98 cmavo list calls it a set also. Don't see how it matters My list is from Sept '94, right after the Logfest at which the issue was settled. I am sorry to here that '98 still has the older form. <Ahh it sounded like you meant "le remei" as a set/mass (which it isn't).> I did mean that {le remei} refers to a mass ("le remei" is a Lojban expression). You said that something beginning with {le} could not refer to a mass or a set and I pointed to a case -- other than {le remei} of an ex[ression that has to refer to a set to make sense. I would argue that {le se remei} is another such case, but that is begging the question in this discussion. <> > I was talking about the sumti themselves -- that's the only way this works. > > See below: > > As xorxes pointed out, {sumti} is used ambiguously in English: for both the > linguistic expression and its referent. It is not ambiguous in Lojban (it is > the expression) and I try to use it that way in English -- and take others as > doing so as well, if possible. What DO you mean by "the sumti themselves"? > Your text reads like something that fluctuates over the two English meanings > and, when read conistently in one reading or the other, is clearly false > (use-mention ambiguity in a peculiarly Lojbanic form). I mean the sumti as opposed to the "sumti referents", which is the term i've been using to refer to la'e of a sumti.> I take this to mean that you are talking about the expressions used, not the things mentioned by suing tose expressions. But then your claim -- that the referent of {le remei} is the two sumti is just false (in the present context), for the *expressions* are not referred to at all. <> > I was going on bad definition remei. the point was the "sumti smuni" part. > > I'm talking about a pair of things refered to by sumti. The two sumti > > referents mentioned were: > > all of somenumber of dogs > > all of somenumber of cats > > Well, unless the number is 1 in each case, this will not be a pair. "All" is > a lousy reading in English (and a bad translation from Latin and Greek), > "every" is better: the reference is each taken separately, not to any lumping > (mass or set) of them -- {le} always comes down to a conjunction. There is > no separate level of the sort you mention between the individual dogs and > cats and their mass. You seem to be missing the fundamental point. The are only *two* sumti. No matter how many animals are refered to. "le remei" being "the pair" being the speaker's description (ala "le") of "the referents of a pair of previous sumti". I don't know how much clearer it can get than that, so i'm out of this thread unless ya address that instead of addressing one-of-the-many-other-things-which- the-speaker-could-describe-as-a-pair.> Yes, there are only two sumt -- expressions, {le gerku} and {le mlatu}. And the number of things they each refer to is irrelevant to that fact. But {le remei} does not refer to that pair, since neither aexpression nor a team of expressions can be tired. Only living creatures (and probably only those of a certain degree of complexity) can be tired, and expressions aren't living creatures (Borges notwithstanding). You want {le remei} to refer to a mass (or whatever) composed of the referents of these two expressions. But the size of that mass will vary depending on the number of referents there are -- not on the number of expressions used to refer to them. The size of the referent of {lu'o le gerku} varies on the number things referred to by {le gerku} and does not depend at all upon the fact that those things are all referred to by a single expression. To be sure, I suppose that {lu'o le gerku} refers to only one mass (though I am not sure about that), but, so does {lu'o le gerku e le mlatu}. It is the number of referents, not the number of referring expressions, that decides the size of (the set underlying) a mass. You could get what you want, maybe, in some other way, though, since it is not something I have ever thought to say, I am not sure how. To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. |