[lojban] Re: {lo}, {lu'o}, and {loi}.

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Opi Lauma <opi_lauma@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I try to systemize the usage of {lo}, {lu'o},
> and
> {loi}. (I have started from the lessons of Nick
> Nicholas
>
(http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less4articles.html)).
> 
> Citation:
> Now consider the English sentence Three men
> carried a
> piano. This sentence has two potential
> meanings, as
> does any sentence involving a plural in
> English. You
> could be saying that the sentence holds true
> for each
> individual of the group. If the men involved
> are Andy,
> Barry, and Chris, you might be saying that Andy
> carried the piano, and Barry carried the piano,
> and
> Chris carried the piano. Alternatively, you
> could be
> saying that the sentence holds for the group as
> a
> unit: no one carried the piano individually,
> but all
> three men carried it together.
> 
> My problem:
> I understood that "individual" interpretation
> means
> that sentence holds true for each individual of
> the
> group (as I understand it is necessary
> condition), in
> other words it means that Andy carried the
> piano, and
> Barry carried the piano, and Chris carried the
> piano.
> For "individual" interpretation one need to use
> {lo}
> or {le}. Ok. However it is not clear for me
> whether it
> is implied that each of them cary the piano
> individually. For example, if they all together
> carry
> the piano it means that each of them carry the
> piano,
> but nobody carry the piano individually. Is it
> still
> "individual" interpretation and one need to use
> {lo}
> or {le}? One can conclude that answer is "No".
> Because
> further it is written that in the second
> ("unit")
> interpretation "no one carried the piano
> individually", exactly as in my example. So if
> they
> all together carry the piano one need to use
> {lu'o}.
> However, if one uses {lu'o} it does not
> necessarily
> means that each person of the group take a part
> into
> the carryng of the piano. So, what I need to
> say if I
> want to say that each of them carry the piano
> and they
> do it together?

I am not sure I understand the case you have in
mind.  Is it that the three of them each carry
the piano individually but they are moving
together and sort of pass the piano from one to
the other? In that case, the carrying the piano
is individual ({lo} or more likely {le}, since we
know who they are).  Their walking along is done
together in the sense of {kansa}; using {loi} (or
{lei}) here would seem excessive, since the
predicate clearly applies to each separately.
There are obviously complexities here but I hope
we don't need to go into them yet. Now, in the
case just examined, it does seem that lu'o remna
(assuming this can have local reference) does
also carry the piano -- much as a team can score
a run because one member of it does.  Although
Lojban handles these different situations by
gadri, they are in fact different ways that a
predicate can apply to the same "thing" (a bunch
of people in this case) and might be better
handled by indicating directly how the
predication takes place (there are also cases
where the gadri cannot be used or where it causes
unnecessary complications), but Lojban does  not
provide the means for doing this (that anyone has
seen so far).  To summarize the status quo: {lo}
is used when the predicate applies to each member
of the group separately (this is a very defective
report on {lo} as presently being proposed but it
will serve as a handy rule of thumb), {loi} is
used when the predicate applies to the group
collectively (but not individually), and {lu'o}
when it applies to the group by virtue of its
applying to at least one member of the group --
or some combination of those members.  These
latter two are rules of thumb as well, since
there are cases where we may be unsure (at least)
that this is the correct form to use.