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

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

On 5/7/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/6/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/6/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > {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.
>
> You indicate that you say something about what the inner qualifier is.
> How is it (in the second example) that you say something about all
> bears?

Consider for example:

    ro tadni pu viska ci lo ro cribe
    Each student saw exactly three of all bears.

I'm saying something about all bears: that each student saw exactly
three of them.

Or for example:

   na ku ci lo ro cribe cu blabi
   It is not the case that exactly three of all bears are white.

I'm saying something about all bears: that it is not the case that
exactly three of them are white.

> In {ro lo tadni poi zvati ro lo nunctu ba snada} you use
> similar forms, but {ba snada} applied to the outer quantifier, {RO lo
> tadni...}. You were saying something about all those students, and not
> "those such that...". If you had said {ci lo tadni poi...} (perhaps
> you're making a prediction: only three will pass), you'd be saying
> something not about that undefined number of students, but some exact
> three. So what is it that you mean by "say something about [inner
> quantifier]"?.

About the referent of the sumti minus the outer quantifier, yes. The
outer quantifier is part of what I'm saying about the referent, it is not
part of the reference. The inner quantifier is part of the reference.

> ({xu (do) pu viska (lo ro cribe) (ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka)} -
> did I group the sumti properly?)

Yes.

> In the above, wouldn't you mean {...ro lo cribe...}?

You could say that too. In that case you would be emphasizing the
distributivity. Something like "I'm asking about bears: did you see
each one of them?"

> Perhaps this: You had offered "I think that {le} indeed serves to
> preclude the 'any' or 'in general' interpretation that {lo} does not
> preclude". Point being that {le} had something to do with
> specificness, and that {lo} allowed for something general. What is
> this general thing? Some examples have been given, with focus on "3
> bears eat berries" vs. "bears eat berries", where the latter was
> intended to illustrate generalness. I don't think that it did, since
> it could only, in my mind at least, mean one of two things: "the
> typical bear eats berries", and "all bears eat berries", both of which
> are adequately handled.

Adequately handled by something other than {lo} you mean?
But that's like saying that tenseless bridi should not exist
because any tense is adequately handled by other means.
{lo} does not indicate anything more than conversion of a selbri
into a sumti. If you want to indicate specificity explicitly, you need
{le}, if you want to indicate universal quantification explicitly, you need
{ro}, if you want to indicate "typical" explicitly (whatever that turns out
to be) you need {lo'e}, etc. {lo} does not serve to indicate explicitly
any of that, but it doesn't preclude those interpretations given a
suitable context.

> What is the distinction between {lo} and {le} if it is not
> 'specificness'? And if it is 'specificness', could you illustrate it
> with a new example, or show how my interpretation of previous examples
> fails?

I lost track about which of your examples we were discussing here,
sorry. These are things that in my view cannot be said with {le}:

   mi nelci lo cakla
   I like chocolate.

   lo cakla cu su'o roi bruna gi'e su'o roi blabi
   Chocolate is sometimes brown and sometimes white.

   mi citka lo cakla ca ro djedi
   I eat chocolate every day.

   mi citka lo cakla i xu do go'i
   I'm eating chocolate, are you doing the same?

These are things that can be said with {le}, and therefore also could
be said with {lo} if you didn't care to use {le}:

   le vi cakla cu kukte
   This chocolate is delicious.

   xu do djica lo spisa be le cakla
   Do you want a bit of the chocolate?
   ("this" or "that" would be more idiomatic than "the" in English, but in
    Lojban you can leave which one you mean to context.)

   ko fairgau le cakla le zvati
   Distribute the chocolate among those present.

mu'o mi'e xorxes