[lojban] Re: lo questions

["Chris Capel" <pdf23ds@gmail.com>]

On Feb 2, 2008 3:02 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2008 at 9:36 PM, Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com> wrote:
> >  But I'm finding myself confused about the effects
> > of the proposal. Here's a section I'm rewriting.
> >
> > > So lo ci gerku means 'any/some of three dogs', or more simply, 'three dogs'. (As a conversational convention, we can assume that the "any/some" means "all" when the number is specified after lo.) ci lo gerku, however, means more like 'three of any/some dogs', i.e. three out of a group of dogs of unspecified size. That's still useful, but probably not what we have in mind when, in English, we say "three dogs".
> >
> > Is this accurate so far?
>
> The statement "lo ci gerku means 'any/some of three dogs'" doesn't sound
> very accurate to me. There is no 'any/some of' in the Lojban phrase, nor any
> 'all' involved either.

I got "any/some" straight from the definition of lo in the BPFK
proposal: "The resulting expression refers generically to *any or
some* individual or individuals that fit as the first argument of the
selbri."

> >Now here's where I'm confused. If "lo ci
> > gerku" is the best equivalent of "three dogs", then wouldn't we expect
> > "ci gerku" to also mean "three dogs"? And yet, according to the gadri
> > proposal[3], "ci gerku" means "ci lo gerku", or "three of some dogs".
> > That seems backwards to me.
>
> {ci [lo] gerku} is not very meaningful by itself. An outer quantifier is an
> operator, and it needs a full bridi to operate on.

So when LFB says

   For example, {ci le gerku} means 'three of the dogs', while {le ci
gerku} means 'the three dogs.'

it's actually being misleading? Perhaps I don't understand gadri well
enough to try to present a simplification.

Chris Capel
-- 
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)


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