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

[Seth Gordon <sethg@ropine.com>]

> You had said:
> 
> {lo ro cribe cu morsi}, and be understood as saying that all the bears
> *in this museum* are dead.
> 
> and now you said:
> 
> {lo cribe cu morsi} as meaning that the museum had all dead bears
> 
> I don't see these as different.

What I said, in the second case, was

>> In a museum, I might assume that either the museum had all live bears or
>> all dead bears, and so I would interpret {lo cribe cu morsi} as meaning
>> the latter.

Note (a) my use of "might", and (b) how my interpretation is based on my
assumptions about how museums operate, and not on anything inherent in
Lojban grammar.

>> On the other hand, if I was hiking in the woods of Lojbanistan and my
>> native guide said {lo cribe cu morsi}, I would *not* assume that he was
>> saying that *all* the bears in these woods were dead.
> 
> And if he said {lo ro cribe cu morsi} you would assume that all bears
> in this forest were dead? Well, if the native guide said "the bears
> are dead", and there were no bears apparent to me or him, and we were
> talking about the forest, I would assume that he meant that the bears
> in the forest were dead.

But since {lo} is defined as taking no default quantifer, {lo cribe cu
morsi} would be an accurate translation of "there is a dead bear" as
well as "the bears are dead".

Another example: if I were working the night desk at the Ramada Inn of
Lojbanistan, and a guest told me {lo morsi cu zvati le mi ckana}, I
would translate that as "there is a dead body on my bed [or perhaps more
than one]", not "all the dead bodies in this hotel are on my bed".