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Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/24/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
You can be ambiguous between cat and elephant by saying "animal". You
can be ambiguous between 1 and 20 by saying "some". You can be
ambiguous between tree and happiness by saying something like
"concept". But to be ambiguous between "each one of these did" and
"the thing (with parts: each one of these) did" ... there is no
superclass that I'm aware of.
How about "these did"? "These wore hats", "these surrounded the building".
Maybe the problem is "the thing with parts", but there is no thing with parts
here, there are just the things themselves. In this regard, you might find
this of interest: <http://philosophy.syr.edu/PDFs/Chap1-508.pdf>
1 "some/all of the bears"
2 "some/all of the four bears"
3 "four of the bears"
4 "some/all of bears" ("some/all of [all of a set-of-bears]")
5 "all of the bears"
6 "four of bears" ("four of [all of a set-of-bears]")
7 "all of the four bears"
So there are 7 things to say. You want to say them in 3 different ways:
a: "individually, ..."
b: "together, ..."
c: "either individually or together, ..."
3 * 7 = 21. But you have the 7 variants, but only {loi} and {lo}. 2 *
7 = 14.
I don't know which 7 variants you mean, there are an indefinitely large
number of variants available.
Clearly, you need to sacrifice being able to say a few things.
7/21 (1 of 3 ways) are covered by loi - when you have loi, you mean
'b', so we have to worry only about saying 'a' and 'c' using the
remaining 7 {lo}-based methods:
1 {lo cribe}
2 {lo vo cribe}
3 {vo lo cribe}
4 {lo ro cribe} - ambiguously "all of the bears"
5 {ro lo cribe} - individually "all of the bears"
6 {vo lo ro cribe}
7 {ro lo vo cribe}
Notice that 1, 2 and 4 are not how I would translate the English versions.
I might use:
1. su'o ja ro lo cribe
2. su'o ja ro lo vo cribe
4. su'o ja ro lo ro cribe
But where did your...
4:"individually, an unspecified quantity of all of a relevant group of X"
e.g. "some of all the hats were beautiful"
su'o le ro mapku cu melbi
5:"ambiguously, all of an unspecified quantity of X"
Not sure what you mean there. In what sense ambiguously?
...disappear to? (Not to imply that I think that those are the proper
ways to say those things, only that they're they ways that you say
them.)
Some of them yes, some not.
And how do you say 2 and 3 both individually, and ambiguously?
Point being, you don't have enough Lojbanic structures available to be
able to add "ambiguously", without scattering what is a very good and
consistent method. And that's what has happened.
There are in fact an excess of structures available. If Lojban had had
a single gadri things would have been so much easier.
Putting aside togetherness/individuality
"all the hats were beautiful"
can very well translate to
{ro lo mapku cu melbi}
based on the assertions that you made regarding inner and outer
quantifiers in all of the latter half of your last response.
Not sure what you mean by "putting aside togetherness/individuality".
{ro lo mapku cu melbi} says of the hats that each of them is beautiful.
Here's a rather interesting statement: You don't have any real meaning
for inner {ro}. "All of some group" is handled by {ro lo mapku}. But
because you could, you gave inner {ro} (with a blank outer, at least)
the meaning:
{lo ro mapku}
(some?, all?) out of all of the relevant group of hats
"all the hats" (e.g. "...in the store")
which, based on the rules that you clearly laid out for inner and
outer quantifiers, is effectively the same as:
{ro lo mapku}
all of the relevant group of hats
The closest translations for me would be:
{ro lo mapku} = each hat
{lo ro mapku} = all hats
The first one has to be distributive. The second one may or may not be,
depending on the context.
mu'o mi'e xorxes