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Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/25/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
Whenever you have a "mass", it's always a "thing made up of".
That's indeed what using the word "mass" (or "group", or "bunch",
or "collection", or "set", or whichever one chooses) does suggest.
That's why I don't say that {loi so'i broda} refers to a mass. I only
say that it refers to many brodas. To them directly, not to an
additional thing on top which contains them. There are some advantages
to doing this, i.e. not bringing in unnecessary entities.
(Notice that I am not saying that you can never talk about
masses/groups/sets/etc., or that it is never useful to do so. You certainly
can, as in for example {lo gunma be lo prenu}, "a group of people". What
I don't do is use {loi} to intoduce a new entity.)
For
example, three men that carry a piano collectively are actually
(together) a "carrier":
X is made up (of 'parts') "three men". X carries the piano.
I would say that as:
(1) lo gunma be lo ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno
A group of three men carry the piano.
Which may be used to describe the same situation as:
(2) loi ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno
Three men carry the piano.
The difference I see between (1) and (2) is that in (1) there is a reference
to a new entity, a group, that has three members, whereas in (2) there
is no reference to any such entity, there is only reference to three men,
which carry the piano together.
How do you translate a blank outer?
I don't think that a sumti with no outer quantifier has a hidden quantifier
that is actually there but is just blank, so I don't need to translate what's
not there.
This is how I think of quantifiers: Any sumti without outer quantifiers
has one or more referents. When you add an outer quantifier, it does
not change the referents of the sumti in any way. The outer quantifier
is meaningless until you use it in a sentence. It indicates how many of
the referents of the sumti fit the predicate. So {le vo prenu}, {ro le
vo prenu},
{re le vo prenu} and {no le vo prenu} all have the same referents: the four
people. The outer quantifier (when you use one) will say different things
about those referents, when you use it in a sentence. When you don't use
an outer quantifier you won't be saying any of the things that you could
say by using one.
Do you simply "not commit
to any interpretation"? If one meant {no} as the outer, would it be
acceptable to use the blank?
No, one would have to use {no}. Similarly if one meant {ro}, or {su'o},
or {re}, etc. one would have to use them.
If {ro} /can't/ be the outer, then that's
very much like saying that {su'o} is the default for a blank outer, I
think.
You can't assume that inserting a {su'o} where no outer quatifier has
been used will leave the meaning unchanged, no. In some cases you
will get a very similar meaning, in other cases a very different one.
> There are in fact an excess of structures available. If Lojban had had
> a single gadri things would have been so much easier.
Then why don't you have a specific structure for "ambiguously"
("either together or individually, but not specifically either"), in
the same way that there's a specific structure for "together" ({loi})
and a specific structure for "individually" ({lo}).
{lo} does not mean "individually". {lo} gives no indication as to the
distributivity or non-distributivity of the predicate in which the sumti
is used.
> {ro lo mapku} = each hat
> {lo ro mapku} = all hats
All of what hats?
All things that count as hats.
You're clearly not talking about *all* hats. You're
talking about all of a relevant group of hats.
If you bring in a relevant group, that implies there is another group,
an irrelevant
one, that is excluded. You can do that in the metalanguage, when explaining
how something was meant, but it can't be part of what you are saying, because
{lo ro mapku} leaves no thing that counts as a hat out.
"All of the bears" (in
the zoo), "all of the hats" (in the store). There's a group there.
When you make the restriction explicit, yes.
> The first one has to be distributive. The second one may or may not be,
> depending on the context.
What is {ro lo ro mapku}? "Each hat out of all the hats"?
Yes, "each of all hats".
How about
{re lo ro mapku}? "Each of two hats out of all the hats"?
"Exactly two of all hats".
So omitting
the outer means that it is ambiguous?
Only in the sense that remaining silent is ambiguous between all
the things I could have said but didn't. But that's not what "ambiguity"
normally means.
mu'o mi'e xorxes