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

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

On 5/10/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/10/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/10/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Yes, and it's easy to do in Lojban:
> > > {lo ro cribe poi nenri le va selri'u}, {lo ro dinju pe le mi klaji}.
> > >
> >
> > By your definition, "all in context"::
>
> I hope I never said that was my definition. It is not. {ro} is just "all",
> not "all in context".

You had stated:

> Well, for me {lo ro cribe} simply refers to all bears, (whatever
> "all bears" is in the context),

with regards to your zoo 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.

In the Lojban half of your example, you use an inner ro, which in
accordance with "{ro} is just 'all', not 'all in context' " should not
refer to those bears that are at the zoo. Which means that your
Lojban-half is asking if someone had seen all bears ever within the
zoo, which is contrary to your ensuing English explanation. Am I
correct?

> > "All in context" is a bad use for inner {ro} for these reasons.
>
> I agree it would be bad.
>
> > > I mean that the set of referents that a word brings into a discourse
> > > is never given by the word itself independently of the context of the
> > > discourse.
> > >
> > Yes, but using context to figure things out is different then refering
> > to the context.
>
> Right. You need context to figure out the precise referent of {lo ro cribe},
> but it certainly does not normally refer to whatever bears are present in the
> context.

Erm. "all bears (ever)" /is/ the referent of {__ ro cribe}. If it
isn't, then "all bears (figure out which 'all' I mean based on
context)" would be the referent. Which I hope I demonstrated to be a
Bad Thing.

Sticking a {ro} into the inner means that you don't need context to
"figure out"/make a best-guess - though you may very well need to know
what the context is so that you can make things relative to it.