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

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

On 5/12/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/12/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> >  It would refer to anything that could relevantly
> > be said to be a bear in the cage, and any other bear in the cage besides
> > the ones we've been talking about before can certainly be relevantly said
> > to be a bear in the cage from what you are saying.
>
> We havn't been talking about those bears before. This is the whole point.

New relevant referents can and are constanly introduced in any
conversation. "Relevant" does not mean "we've been talking about
it". I don't really see what the problem is. If we've been talking
about twenty bears and now you want to talk about other bears as well,
and you think I might be fixated on the twenty for some reason, then
say something like: "Now, taking into account not just the twenty
bears that we've been talking about but other bears as well, ..." I don't
think such extreme measures are called for very often, but they are
always available.

> > There is no universally fixed referent of "bears
> > in that cage" that can be relied on for every possible context ever.
>
> Yes, there is: "all the bears in that cage now". How is this even
> remotely ambiguous?

I wouldn't say it's ambiguous. But I would say that every expression
can eventually have different referents in different contexts. For example:

"All the bears now in that cage are eating."
(Probably the most common referent.)

"If all the monkies in that cage were bears, then all the bears now in that cage
would outnumber the rabbits."
(A very odd referent.)

And in any case, I don't know what your point is here. Even if
"all the bears in that cage" would always and under all possible
circumstances have one and the same referent, that wouldn't change
the fact that countless other {lo ro broda} forms have more easily
varying referents with context.

> So you're saing that {L_ cribe} defaults to {L_ su'o cribe}, "some
> relevant bears"?

No, I oppose default quantifiers. I don't take {lo cribe} to have any
implicit inner or outer quantifier. Inner {su'o} may look very harmless,
but it can have many connotations that I don't really care for. I'm
happier with no quantifier expressed meaning no quantifier implied.

mu'o mi'e xorxes