Re: di'e preti zo nu

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

la robin cusku di'e

>If this is the case, then both the cmavo list and the reference grammar are
>seriously misleading. I took it as more like "There is a set of boxes
containing
>at least one member, and I need at least one member of that set." I won't
>comment on the symbolic representation or suggest alternatives, since my
>predicate logic ain't what it used to be.

You can't use the usual symbolic representation for that if by "need"
you mean "x1 needs object x2". Allowing for events, you can put it
into some form like:
There is a set of boxes B and Need(I, (Ex x belongs to B & Have(I,x) )
but this is definitely not {mi nitcu lo tanxe}, it is
{mi nitcu le nu mi ponse lo tanxe}.

>> I meant the logical expression above, which is undoubtedly
>> what the Lojban means.
>
>Undoubtedly? If there were no doubt, the whole le/lo problem would never
have
>arisen in the first place.

Well, if there is any doubt that {mi nitcu lo tanxe} means Ex T(x) &
N(mi,x),
then I have no idea how {lo} works. This should be valid for any predicate,
not just {nitcu} and {tanxe}. Besides, the reference from the Book that
SwifRain posted confirms it.

> I said that however confident people may
>be about Esperanto, Interlingua, Occidental or whatever, I for one would
prefer
>Lojban to grow comparitively slowly for a while, so that we have time to
sort out
>glitches, especially in the pragmatics of the language. These questions
about
>articles were what I had in mind at the time.

Yes, it would be interesting, for example, to get a list of all the usage
that {lo'e}
has seen so far. A good chunk of it would be my own usage, as I'm trying to
describe it here, but seeing if and how other people use it can give us
better
ideas than trying to make up examples.

>Oh well, look on the bright side - nobody has _ever_ managed to come up
with a
>satisfactory explanation of English articles!

Not even in Esperanto, which has only one article, is the usage fully
explained,
but of course in that case it is based on the usage of other languages. We
should
at least try to sort it out in Lojban though.

co'o mi'e xorxes