Re: [lojban] Again {lo}.

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

Opi Lauma wrote:
> > For example to say that the dog is man's best friend
>
> you 
>
> > would use {lo gerku}: {lo gerku cu xagrai pendo lo 
> > remna}
>
>
> OK, in this example {lo gerku} means neither "all
> dogs" nor "some dogs", it rather means "most of dogs"
> isn't? Really, we can say that "the dog is man's best
> friend" only if MOST OF DOGS are man's best friends.
> Or the same {lo gerku} can be replaced here by "a
> typical dog" without changes in meaning, I think. So,
> are "most of ..." and "a typical ..." correct
> substitution for {lo}? If "Yes", can this
> interpretation be used always? By the way in English
> sentence "The" has been used and in lojban {lo}. Why?

{lo gerku cu pendo lo remna} means that there is at least one dog, such 
that it is a friend to at least one human, which is not what we want 
here.  The article you want is probably {lo'e}

lo'e gerku cu pendo lo'e remna
The typical dog is a friend to the typical human.

I'm leaving out the "best" part for simplicity's sake, since then you'd 
have to rephrase it along the lines of "Of the friends of the typical 
human, the best one is a dog" or "the best creature by the standard of 
being a friend to the typical human is the typical dog."

> What happens with "the <-> le", "an/a <-> lo" correspondence?

That is never more than a very rough guide, and not a very helpful one 
IMHO. There are three senses of "the" which may make the use of "le" 
appropriate: the non-veridical sense (e.g. "The Queen Mary" is a ship, 
not a queen), the specific sense ("the man in the corner") and the 
old-information sense ("Yesterday I saw a dog. The dog bit me.") 
Actually the latter sense is more specifically covered by "bi'unai", but 
"le" will do as a kludge, since it means "the thing I have in mind", and 
if you've just referred to it, you have it in mind. One use of "the" 
which isn't covered by "le" is typicality, as we see above. Here's 
another example from TCLL:

lo'e cinfo cu xabju le f'iortu'a
The lion dwells in Africa.

robin.tr

--
"I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to 
understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language 
devised for telling one another where the best fruit is." -- Terry Pratchett


Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Universitesi
Ankara 06533
Turkey

www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin