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

On 5/7/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Let me summarize where thing lie at the moment
and where various people are trying to make them
go.  I omit Maxim's, partly because I don't think
they have really settled down yet and partly
because I am not at all sure I understand where
they are at the moment.


(Indeed they aren't.) I'll illustrate my position, as you asked it, by
commenting on or (dis)agreeing with various given background
statements. You'll have to bear with me (pun perhaps intentional) in
my responses below, as I'm less familiar (with some aspects of it).


Officially:
{le} and {lo} are distinguished by specificity.
In addition (as a consequence of inspecificity,
so it can be taken as pointing somewhere), what
is referred by {lo broda} to must be a broda. On
the other hand, what is referred to by {le broda}
does not have to be a broda (though its being a
broda is the best reason for calling it one).
This is a consequence of specificity: we have the
referent picked out already and the description
merely gives it a tag -- one that will help
others to find the right thing as well (the


So specificity is (was?) as follows:

I have something in mind. It might be all bears, it might be a group
of three bears that were ahead of three other bears as they were
chasing us, it might be all bears that chase, and (herein lies your
specificity) it might be the three chaser-type bears that specifically
chased us, or just (some) three chaser-type bears. The former is
specific, the latter is non specific. Is this illustrative?

I disagree with this concept of specificity. If I wanted to say "three
chaser type bears" (non-specific, just that some three), I'd say {ci
lo (ro) broda poi [restricted to also-chasers]}.

In all cases (regarding the inner quantifier), the referent is picked
out. You could mean 10 bears, 20 bears, the referent is there. You
need not even know the number of bears that you mean - maybe you mean
incidentally all, maybe you mean somewhere above one, maybe you mean
somewhere around 10000 - you just don't know how to accurately
quantify them, or maybe you don't want to. The best you /can/ do is
restrict them ("I mean that are also chasers"), or restrict them
absolutely with an inner {ro} - "yes I mean exactly 'they are bears
and they are chasers', in which case you can't say 'well no, I really
meant the ones that are climbers (excluding non-climbers), and are
bears, and are chasers' ". Basically, ("bears that are chasers, all of
them, and so that's exactly what I mean/have in mind").

Adding that inner {ro} means that you're committing to your
restrictions, and no other restrictions need apply. If you think that
maybe you havn't restricted it well enough ("well, I mean bears that
were chasers but perhaps this could be restricted further.."), keep it
at (the default) {su'o}, don't use {ro}.

'{ro} is a commiter' applies to /both/ {lo} /and/ {le}. With {le},
however, you could backpedal and say that your definition of bear (or
chaser) meant that they were climbers also ('bears in my mind were
inherently climbers, no bears existed that weren't'), but you'd
probably just say that you goofed up (on your own definition) and
should have restricted it better or not have used {ro} - just as you'd
do if you messed up on your {lo} restrictions.

Something very important, and perhaps the source of the initial
definition's error: The complete purpose of {ro} is that it finalizes
your restrictions. "Those three bears that chased us (were brown)" is
*not* translated using a {ci}. It's translated using a {ro}. {lo ro
cribe poi jersi mi'o [were brown]}. But in fact the complete
translation would be (perhaps) {ci lo ro cribe cu jersi mi'o
[identical with] ro lo ci cribe cu bunre}. So it seems that English
has a nice way of wrapping an assertion regarding exactly how many
there were right into a sentence. Note the difference between:

"The three bears that chased us (were brown)"
"Those three bears that chased us (were brown)"

The first implies that there may have been other chasing bears ("but I
mean just three, and don't want to bother restricting"), the second
basically contains an assertion regarding how many bears there were.
The first is translated to {lo ci cribe poi jersi mi'o [were brown]}.
The translation to the second is above (involving identity).

All of this is why I considered the zoo example provided incorrect,
and should serve to illustrate exactly how I'm approaching
quantifiers.

Perhaps an aside: Because an assertion regarding how many there were
seems useful, I suggest that ro+# would be the equivalent of "those
three", or "them three-all bears" (suppose a rural dialect) - that is,
you could now pack an assertion of exactly how many there were such
that fit... into your basic statement. This is thought to be a bad
idea in the case of {lo rosoci cribe} "there are things, and there are
91 such that are bears", (er, I may have screwed that up) and it is a
bad idea for something so vaguely restricted, but it would capture the
translation of "those three bears..." perfectly. But this suggestion
can probably wait until this is all sorted out.


This is a consequence of specificity: we have the
referent picked out already and the description
merely gives it a tag -- one that will help
others to find the right thing as well (the
correct tag will sometimes -- maybe even often --
interfere with finding the right thing: calling
Juno a man rather than a woman, while correct
would not lead to Juno, since others identified
her(him) as a woman).


As I hope I demonstrated above, you always have a referent picked out.
But yes, this is exactly what I consider the function of {le}.


The implicit quantifiers on {le} are {su'o}
internally and {ro} externally.  The implicit
quantifiers on {lo} are just the reverse.  So an
explicit internal quantifier on {lo} gives the
number of all the whatevers in the world, while
one on {le} just tells how many thingies the
speaker has in mind.  External quantifers are
partitive, how many out of the totality given by
the internal quantifer are being spoken of here.


I'm undecided on the outer, but I am firm in my current belief that
{ro} should never be an inner quantifier by default for any case.


{lo,le,la} are about individuals taken
separately, that is, what is predicated of a
sumti of these sorts is predicated of each
ultimate referent of that sumti taken
individually. In contrast, {loi, lei, lai} are
about "masses," one of those words that
Loglan/Lojban has taken over from some fairly
precise meaning -- I think "mass noun" -- and
used differently and without a very clear
meaning. Among the things that examples suggest
as falling under this notion -- and which others
have elevated at one time or another to the main
meaning of {loi} etc. expressions are 1) {loi
broda cu brode} says of some brodas that although
no one of them brodes, taken together they do
(e.g. surround a building as the brode), all of
them participating in the event.  2) the
corporation of brodas -- like 1 in that no one
member does it but unlike 1 in that {loi broda}
may remain the same even if the brodas referred
to change and the corporation may do things in
which some -- or even all -- of its members do
not participate (GM makes cars although many
members of GM don't work on cars, the Red Sox won
the pennant although all management and some
players on the roster did not ever play any
baseball)(Species are either in this group or
something very similar.).  3) The mass noun
related to {broda} (which, in Lojban, is always
count), the goo into which brodas dissolve under
pressure and of which they may be taken as slices
(the "gavagai" jokes and, after the accident,
"there was dog all over the car).  There are
probably others I have forgotten ("myopic
individuals" or some such that I never
understood, for example).  In any case, they lVi
sumti are not about individuals taken separately.
{lo'i, le'i, la'i} are for Cantor sets of
individuals of the noted sort.  Like the lVi
series they preserve the disntions among the
simple e, o, and a gadri.


I am somewhat ignorant of 'Cantor sets' (reduced into infinite
infinitely small sub-things..?), though I think I understand enough
(of sets) to understand (what you're explaining). As for lVi, I think
(perhaps) that the most important thing is that they all do it
together. Questions like "is it true that loi ro countries fought the
country of Germany if the country of England has fought it?" seem not
to affect the discussion.


The way changes are going (this may not be a
completely accurate presentation of all the view,
since I am a partisan here and also don't really
understand some moves by others).

A. The lV'i series for sets was needed in the
olden days because standard logic had (that it
was aware of) no way of dealing with plurals than
by sets (which are singular but encompass many).
Of course, in that same standard logic talk about
sets had no (very straightforward) way to deal
with the properties of the members of a set while
talking about the set explicitly.  The appearance
(or coming to attention) of plural quantification
(and reference) removed that problem and
introduced a device (actually either of at least
two devices) which dealt with plurals in a way
that covered both ordinary sumti (lV, lVi, etc.)
and did all the things that sets were explicitly
used to do.  In short, though lV'i remains in the
language, it has virtually no usefulness outside
of mathematics (and so does not need such a
useful set of words).  I think everyone wants to
get rid of these altogether, but it will take
some doing to actually make the change.

Of the various uses of lVi, 1 is covered in
plural logic by the notion of non-distributive
(collective) predication.  As such it is not
appropriately expressed by a gadri, since it does
not involve something different from a
distributive predication but only a different way
of predicating on the same thing(s). It ought


I don't understand


then to be somehow expressed in the predicate not
the arguments but there is presently no way to do
this in Lojban and no active suggestions how to
do it.  For the nonce then the difference is
still covered by the lV-lVi contrast, even though
this leaves some cases uncovered.  2, the
corporate form, which is about a different sort
of thing and so might be covered by a gadri, is
also still covered by lVi, often without noticing
the difference involved.  Should a predicate way
of dealing with the collective/distributive
distinction be devised, lVi might naturally be


I'm again lost.


used for these cases, although they are perhaps
not common enough to deserve such a central set
of words.  I thin that some people still use lVi
for the goo reading, 3, although it seems to be
adequately covered by collective predication over
pieces of brodas and that locution seems to be
about the right length for the frquency of this
sort notion.  (Something like this may also work
forthe corporate model, 2, using the appropriate
one of a number of predicates for organizations
of this sort -- if the right ones exist).

Moving lV, as far as I can tell {le} and {la} are
unchanged, except that the distributivity need
not be assumed; rather whether distribution or
collection is meant is mainly left to context,


What is distribution and collection (perhaps with examples)?. It might
help to know that I'm very vague on the distinction between {lu'o ro
lo ro cribe} and {ro lo ro cribe}.


with the lVi forms brought in where collection is
crucial and not obvious.  Presumably solving the
predication form of this would allow these gadri
to be neutral -- just referring to the brodas
involved without limiting how they are inolved.
Implicit quantifiers have been done away with,


I assume that implicit quantifiers are basically an additional
assertion regarding how many there are such that..., as I described
above, correct?


except that the very meaning of these two gadri
require that there be something they refer to
(i.e., it is as if the implicit internal
quantifier were {su'o}) and both distribution and
collection are about all the members in these
cases, so something like explicit external {ro}
is involved.  These readings off what is involved
in specifying seem to be the point which the old
implicit quantifiers were meant to cover).


My position regarding outer quantifiers is undecided. It's the
difference between
{xu do pu viska lo cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka} meaning:

{xu do pu viska su'o lo cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka} - "did
you see some"
{xu do pu viska ro lo cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka} - "did you
see all (surely meaning did you see all that were in the zoo)"

...and given this example to oppose others that exist, I can't say
which is better.


The case of {lo} is somewhat more complex.  The
basics are clear enough: it is unmarked for
specificity and for distributivity. And the


Again (as always, since I think that it's my major point), I wonder
what is meant by specificity. Distributivity is another matter, and I
need to give it more consideration (specifically in terms of the
second non-ro-outer suggesting X-for-each").


explicit external quantifiers are clear, that is
how many brodas we are attributiing the predicate
to (and, probably, distributively since
quantifiers tend to individualize rather than
mass).
After that comes the separation.  On one view,
the unmarked form is just the unspecific form of
{le}, brodas that get caught up in this case by
context and intent, but not specified.  An
explicit internal quantifier says how many there
are as such in this case, and an external
quantifier says how many of them get the current
prdicate.  And, by the way, {lo broda} in primary
usage entails that there are broda (not in the
scope of negations, world altering modals,
absttractions or opque contexts).  I am less
clear what the other version says about simple
{lo broda} except that on occasion at least, it
is said to yield true claims from primary
occurrences even when there are no brodas and to
authorize external generalization from opaque
contexts.  To do these things, it can no longer
refer to brodas as such but moves to something at
a different level (I've tried a number of
suggestions, none of which worked apparently). In


I'm somewhat lost here.


addition, internal quantifiers become part of the
defining predicate: {lo ci broda} is not three
brodas bu some (or maybe no?) broda triads.  {mu
lo ci broda} then is five broda triads -- between
seven and fifteen brodas.


I disagree with this. {ci lo broda} is the triad (formed out of
members of some here-unrestricted group), and the {mu} (five triads
of) is given by whatever-it-is earlier in the sentence. The quoted
version would be inconsistent with what I've described, and I'm very
sure also inconsistent with whatever is the current usage.


Now, against that background, I wonder if Maxim
can provide some clarification of his suggestions.


The biggest aspect of my suggestion is that {lo}-types are capable of
handling all cases thus-far provided, and that {le} is /not/ a subset
of {lo}. They are completely seperate. It may as well be that {le}
didn't exist. And, with that in mind, this lets us re-introduce the
{le}-types as a compliment to the {lo}-types, with the very same
usage, except that with {le} you get "by my definition", while with
{lo} you get "by common definition". I'd then imagine that {le} would
be used for more casual speech where you're not explaining /
discussing / arguing anything, and so have the liberty of using your
own definitions (just in case, so why not?), and it allows for
comments like "by-my-definition-the prince of Wales tore down the
curtains" (in reference to a chimp).