Re: [lojban] Re: Articles

[robin <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

Stefan "1of3" Koch wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I don't understand all of Pierre's translations. IMHO "lo ci gerku" should
> be "one or more of three real dogs".

It parses like {that which is [real (three dogs)]}, implying that the 
set of dogs that exist has three members. If what you mean by "one or 
more of three real dogs" is that three dogs exist in the world and you 
are talking about one of them, then fine.

[Anything with "lo" has an implicit inner quanitifier of "ro", and thus 
refers to _all_ the things which are indicated by the sumti.  If you 
change the implicit "ro" to "ci", you are making a statement about the 
total number indicated by the sumti. This is not generally very useful, 
though I suppose a dogmatic monotheist could say "lo pa cevni".]

> And I always thought in front of mass or set descriptors there could be only
> numbers smaller than 1.

This is not an absolute rule, but it is true for all practical purposes. 
 A common mistake is to think "re loi gerku" means "two packs of dogs". 
 It does, but the two packs have exactly the same members!

> Furthermore I would add that the translations are quite unprecise. None of
> the descriptors really marks definitness (although the le-series might be
> considered more definite than the lo-series).

Yes, by virtue of the fact that "le" implies something specific that the 
speaker has in mind.  This means it often stands duty for "the" as 
opposed to "a", though this is not logically implied, and could be 
considered malglico.  For example:

mi viska lo gerku .i le gerku cu batci mi

might be understood (especially by an English reader) as "I saw a dog. 
the dog bit me."  However, strictly speaking, "le gerku" could be a 
different dog I have in mind, or something which is not actually a dog. 
A more Lojbanic rendering might be

mi viska lo gerku .i lo bi'unai gerku cu batci mi

though most people would probably just use "ri" - "lo bi'unai gerku" is 
something like "that self-same dog."

robin.tr

--
"Certitude is possible for those who only own one encyclopedia."
- Robert Anton Wilson

Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Univeritesi
Ankara 06533
Turkey

www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin