Re: [lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le

["Maxim Katcharov" <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com>]

On 5/6/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
>   ti me ba'e ro pa jarbu be te zu'e lo nu xabju
>   "This is the ONE (neighborhood to live in)."

This looks quite accurate.

> > {lo ro cribe cu citka lo ro jbari} - "(all) bears eat berries"
>
> That would also say that all berries get eaten by bears.

Yes, it could also say that. To be quite specific about it, I'd say
{ro lo ro...su'o lo ro...} - "all bears eat berries".

> > {ro lo cribe cu citka lo ro jbari pe mi} - "(some specific) bears ate
> > (some unspecific of) my berries"
>
> That says that each bear eats all my berries, which can't really be
> the case unless there's only one bear.

(My bad, I shouldn't have tried to do anything with the berries, I was
treating it as some sort of mass noun, and should have properly marked
it as such.)

Yes, there would only be one bear. Except it wouldn't say that all the
berries were eaten, just that _some_ of them were.

> > {ro lo cribe cu citka ro lo ro jbari pe mi} - "(some specific) bears
> > ate (, specifically,) all my berries"
>
> "Each bear eats each of all my berries"

Yes. But by my definition, it would not mean "Each bear of all bears
ate...", but rather "Each bear of some number of bears ate...". I'm
not sure which you meant.

> > {ro lo ci cribe cu citka lo ro jbari pe mi} - "three bears ate my
> > berries" (all of some specific three)
>
> "Each of three bears eats all my berries."
>
> In all of the above cases, you don't want {ro} as the outer quantifier
> because you don't want it to be distributive.

I didn't mean that bears ate berries as a group, but that berries were
eaten as a group, but I didn't express that properly.

"Each of three" is exactly right.

> > {ci lo ro cribe cu citka lo ro jbari pe mi} - "three bears ate my
> > berries" (some unspecific of all)
>
> This says that of all bears, there are exactly three such that each
> of them eats all my berries.

Yes.

> > Two questions before I can give a better explanation:
> >
> > What is the difference between {ro lo ro cribe} and {ro le ro cribe}
> > by your definition?
>
> ro lo ro cribe = each of all bears
> ro le ro cribe = each of all the bears (i.e. each of the bears I'm
> talking about)

This is expressed better by:

ro lo ro cribe = each of all bears
ro lo cribe = each of all the bears (i.e. each of the bears I'm talking about)

ro lo ci cribe = each of the three bears (i.e. each of the three bears
I'm talking about)

Just don't default the inner quantifier, or let context override the
default (and if context overrides the default, then just don't default
it). Or is there some reason that the inner quantifier is being
defaulted? I think that this defaulting is an artifact from when {lo
ci} meant that there were three in the universe, and is no longer
appropriate.

> > How would you say "I mean every last bear in the universe", keeping in
> > mind that {le pa cribe} would not say anything about the amount of
> > bears in the universe?
>
> ro cribe poi zasti bu'u lo munje = each bear that exists in the universe

Heh, yes indeed, though it was not what I was expecting. Would {lo ro
cribe}, qualified by time (and space?) work also?