Re: di'e preti zo nu

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx]

la robin cusku di'e

>Maybe the confusion lies in the use of "that" the English glosses: "that
which I
>call" and "that which really is". What precisely does "that" mean here?
The
>normal deictic use of "that" would make both {le} and {lo} refer to a
particular
>thing - I was assuming that this was not the case, but rather that
>
>{le cipni} = something that I call a bird
>{lo cipni} = something that really is a bird

The second is correct, but the first one is not, it should be "everything
that I'm
calling a bird". The quantifier matters! I'm not taking it as deictic in
either case.

I changed "I call" to "I am calling" so as not to confuse it with
"everything
that I usually call a bird", which is not what {le cipni} means.

>> le ci verba cu citka lo plise
>> Each of the three children eats an apple.
>>
>> Had I used {le plise}, the meaning necessarily would have been that
>> each child ate the same apple (or apples, but each child eats them all).
>>
>I don't think {le} demands this, though it may suggest it.

It demands it. It maps directly to what would be in logical notation
something like:

For every x which is one of the three children, and for every y
which
is one of the apples, x eats y.

>Going back to the
>discussion of proverbs, you made the same point about my
>
>> le lajgerku na batci le lajgerku
>>
>which you said meant that no dog bites itself".

This is not the same point. Here I said that repeating the same
description in one sentence suggests to me that the described is the
same object. In any case, that means:

It is not the case that: for every x which is one of the
dogs
and for every y which is one of the dogs, x bites y.

>This is not necessarily true,
>just as in English "the dog didn't bite the dog" could mean either "the dog
>didn't bite itself", or, more probably, "the dog didn't bite the other
dog".

It could mean either, I agree. But this is not a quantification problem.

> In
>classical (truth conditional) semantics, both interpretations are possible,
but
>in pragmatic terms, in English, Lojban and every other language I know, the
>former meaning would be expressed by a reflexive.

Yes, and the other would be expressed with some qualification
like "other". But I insist that this is not the same issue.

>{.a'u.ue} I find {lei} quite useful. Consider the difference between
>
>mi se batci le gerku
>mi se batci lei gerku
>mi se batci le ci gerku
>mi se batci lei ci gerku

I never said {lei} wasn't useful. In {mi se batci lei ci gerku} I may or may
not receive three bites, is that what you mean? The difference is more
striking in examples like:

le ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o
lei ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o

which clearly have to refer to different situations. All I meant was that
if you had to choose one single article and drop all others then it should
be {lei} which is in my opinion the most basic.

co'o mi'e xorxes