Re: Long reply to Lojbab's splurge.

[jorge@phyast.pitt.edu]

And & lojbab:
> > >> I guess a formal definition of a zo'e in the nth place of a predicate
> > >> broda is "le sexiny broda" or perhaps "da voi sexiny broda" if there is
> > >That sounds a bit daft to me, given the non-veridicality of le and
> > >voi.
> > Do you mean that you think that "zo'e" is veridical???  That sounds
> > *more than a bit* daft to me %^)
> {zoe klama} entails not merely {da voi klama} but also {da poi klama}.
> I am not merely describing zoe as a goer; I'm claiming that {da klama}.

I don't see how either position can be right. {zo'e} is neither veridical
nor non-veridical, because it is not a description. What would it mean
to say it is veridical? It has a referent that is obvious from context.
There is nothing for it to be veridical about.

{zo'e klama} means that the obvious referent goes. It can't entail
{da poi klama} because a bridi can't entail a sumti. A sumti is
not a statement.

I think {zo'e klama} does entail {da klama}, but this latter one
is a much weaker claim, because supposedly the audience can identify
the goer, or else it is irrelevant.

(Somewhere it is said that {zo'e} can stand for {noda}, but I believe
that it cannot, because that is tantamount to saying that {mi klama}
can mean {mi na klama}.)

> > Nothing is solid with "quantifier+lo" till we decide (and agree) what
> > "lo" means.  Right now, every posting I read that mentions the word "lo"
> > feels like quicksand.
> But we haven't disagreed about {lo} since last year. The debate is about
> what contribution to the logical form is made by quantifiers other than
> suho & ro. We agree {lo} = {da poi}, gag at the redundancy though you
> might, so the debate over "quantifier+lo" applies equally to
> "quantifier+da". And we seem to be reaching agreement in that debate,
> too.

Something to point out is that {lo} = {da poi} is not to be understood
as saying that in any piece of text you can change one for the other
and all is well. That is not the case. That may even make the text
ungrammatical.

What it says is that {Q1 lo Q2 broda} is the same as {Q1 da poi broda},
but even then, automatic substitution doesn't work, especially if one
is not careful with all the elided terminators.

The Q2 of the {lo} version is not easily recoverable in the {da}
version. From the point of view of logic this is not a big deal.
Q2 is always equivalent to {ro}, so all it says (when used explicitly)
is how many broda there are in the world, but it is kind of marginal
information not relevant to the logical quantification.


> > You cancel the implicit quantifier by putting in your own explicit one.
> > Why is this hard?
> It may not be relevant to {loi}. But for {lei}, you have a contrast
> between the mass, a portion of the mass, and the whole of the mass.

I don't see much difference between the mass and the whole of the
mass. If it's just a matter of emphasis, you can make the pragmatic
distinction between explicitly stating the quantifier and leaving
it unstated. Otherwise, I don't see the contrast.

> The current default is the whole of the mass.

Not completely true, but I wish it was. Lojbab said he agrees, but
the paper says it's {pisu'o}, like for {loi}.

> I don't know how
> to change this to just the mass.

It is just the mass. The mass, the whole mass, and nothing but the mass.

> E.g. "I like the bookage",
> as distinct from "I like all of the bookage" {mi nelci (piro) lei
> cukta},

And how would those differ in meaning? You either like it or you
don't. If you want to add whether there are components that you like
or not, you may do so. To like something, do you have to like
each component, or most components, or just the general effect
they produce? That's a matter of the meaning of "like", independent
of masses.

>"I like some (and possibly all) of the bookage" {mi nelci
> pisuo lei cukta}.

Right.

> Just as {mi nelci le pa cukta} means just "I like
> the book" rather than "I like all of the book"

I don't see much difference, other than pragmatics. Unless
by "all of the book" you mean "each part of the book", but that
is not what {piro} gives you, it gives you the book as a whole,
not each one of its parts by itself.

It's like saying that there is a difference between "the set
of all books" and "the whole set of all books". They are the
same thing. {piro} is needed only in contrast with the
possible {pisu'o}, it doesn't have any more significance than
that.

> > I opine that one could metalinguistically make a statement at the
> > beginning of text that can change the default throughout the text as an
> > alternative.
> How?

Why metalinguistically? You could just say at the beginning of the
text "I am not going to be using Lojban as she'd be spoke if there
were actual speakers, but rather I will be using my own brand,
where the default quantifiers are such and such..."

Jorge