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

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 5/6/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:

> What kind of each are you talking about? "each bear" is ambiguous, not
> generic, I would think.

Vague maybe, rather than ambiguous?

Perhaps an example with something less natural-kindish than bears
could show what I mean more clearly. For example:

  ro lo tadni poi zvati ro lo nunctu ba snada
  Each student that attends every course will pass.

There is no specific group of students involved there, and I may not
be thinking of any specific set of courses either. This may be for
example a rule in some school.  Maybe no student has even enroled
yet.

> {ci lo ro cribe cu citka lo ro jbari pe mi} - "of all bears, there are
> exactly three such that each of them eats all my berries."
>
> When you say "exactly three", I don't think that you mean /only/ three
> ({po'o}).

I do mean at least three and at most three. In other words, of all bears
there have to be three and no more than three such that each eats all
my berries.

{po'o} is different however. For example, if in addition to exactly
three bears, there was an elephant that also ate all my berries,
{po'o} would be wrong, but "exactly three bears" would still be right.

> And if not that, then "exactly" seems unneccisary. Is it?
> And so, what is the difference between:
>
> {ro lo ci cribe}
> {ci lo ro cribe}

In the first case, I'm going to say something about three bears, that each
of them is or does something. In the second case, I'm going to say
something about all bears, that exactly three of them are or do something.

> Consider that it may be:
>
> [unspecific subset of] lo [a specific 'set' of bears that I'm thinking
> of] ("set" may not be the same as the lojbanic set.)

Perhaps we are using "specific" differently. All I require of the referent
of {lo ci cribe} is that it consist of three bears.

> > I don't think {lo ro bear} is any more precise than "all bears" in English.
>
> Yes, "all bears" is what I meant, I just wanted to be explicit that I
> meant "all bears", and not "all of some bears that I have in mind" or
> anything like that.

An example:

   xu do pu viska lo ro cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka
   Did you see all bears when you visited the zoo?

I don't have any specific bears in mind there, because I don't even know
how many bears the zoo has. I do intend to ask about all the bears at
the zoo, but all I know about them is that they are all the bears at the
zoo. I am not using the description to get at some referents that I have
otherwise in mind. There is only the description that generates the referents
for me. I am certainly not asking about all bears that exist in the universe.

mu'o mi'e xorxes