[lojban] Re: Again {xorlo} and Wiki.

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

--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/16/05, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > In xorlo, {lo cribe} is
> > bears, unspecified in every possible way
> > including number (indeed, unspecifiable
> without
> > changing the sumti) 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> > and {lo pa cribe} is an
> > uspecified bunch of unit bunches of bears
> > (typically by context a single such, I think
> --
> > but context is so tricky that "typical" may
> not
> > be meaningful).
> 
> I won't say that's wrong because you are
> probably using
> "bunch" in some technical sense, but it doesn't
> sound
> right with the ordinary meaning of bunch.
> Indeed the
> inner {pa} excludes bunches of bears. Example:
> 
>     lo pa cribe cu tijmau lo re remna
>     A single bear is heavier than two humans.
> 
> A bunch of bears would be even heavier, of
> course, but the
> point here is that one bear is heavier than two
> humans.

Yeah, "bunch" is just a convenient way of
bringing uniformity to a large number of cases,
including cases where the bunch encompasses only
one item (unlike sets, there are no empty
bunches).  So, the case of {lo pa cribe} amounts
to a bunch of single bears -- indirectly, of
course, since this is an unquantified {lo}
expression.

> >  In xorlo, {pa lo cribe} still means
> > "one out of the referent of {lo cribe}" but
> that
> > referent is now (albeit indirectly)
> definitely at
> > least all the bears in the world, so {pa lo
> > cribe} amounts to (thouhg by a differnt
> route)
> > {pa da poi cribe}, as it did in CLL. 
> 
> I don't think {pa lo cribe} contains any
> implicit "in the world",
> but it certainly differs from {lo pa cribe}.
> For example:

In the universe then? (using "universe" in the
technical sense?) I think that this expression
ought not be true if there are no bears in
whatever is the relevant domain.
 
>    pa lo cribe cu tijmau re lo remna
>    Exactly one bear is heavier than exactly two
> humans.
> 
> This means that if we sort bears and humans by
> weight,
> from lightest to heaviest, the sequence will
> start:
> 
> (Zero or more bears here), 
> Human1, 
> (Zero or more bears here), 
> Human2, 
> Bear1, 
> Human3, ...
> (Any number of bears and humans here).
> 
> That is the only way that exactly one bear
> (Bear1) 
> is heavier than exactly two humans (Human1 and
> Human2).
> All other bears are either heavier than less
> than two humans,
> or heavier than more than two humans.
> 
> > Note this
> > is different from {lo pa cribe}, which allows
> > that more than one bear does whatever pa lo
> cribe
> > does though still gets translated as/
> translates
> > "a/one bear." 
> 
> {lo pa cribe} simply does not allow more than
> one bear 
> to enter into the picture. Once you allow more
> than one
> bear into the picture, {lo pa cribe} is no
> longer usable.

Well, by thus restricting the picture, it does
allow that, outside the frame, there are other
bears doing whatever it is.  Indeed, given the
indefiniteness of {lo pa cribe}, it allows that
there are other singleton bears doing it.  To be
sure, this is not the right way to talk about
these constructions: better is just to say "the
one-bear type embraces ..." which then can be
true of all manner of cases of one bear (token)
depending on how we take "embraces."  But getting
down to the behavior of actual bears is a second
step and one that does some harm to the notion
that {lo pa cribe} represents.