[lojban] Re: A Proposed Explanation of {gunma}

[Jorge Llambías <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On 12/16/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> So, by you, {lo broda} are just some brodas that
> you happen to be considering together for the
> nonce,

Yes, or a single one. In any case, they are all the
brodas in the universe of discourse (not to be confused
with all the brodas that exist in the world).

> while a gunma is several whatevers
> together where there togetherness has achieved
> some sort of separate status: a team, a
> committee, a wolf pack, and so on, maybe even
> enough status that it could continue to be that
> thing even if some of the whatevers left and
> others came in.

Yes, and it is not any special grammatical entity.

>  In other words, a togeherness
> that has achieved reification, which lo broda per
> se have not collectively.  OK, even if I thought
> that {lo broda} was a set of some sort, this
> distinction is a useful one to make.  How do we
> refer to a particular gunma? I suppose with a
> description like {lo kamni} (or maybe better,
> {le}) or a name: {la ienkis}o

Yes.

> or explicitly
> massifying some tiher object like {lu'o lo
> broda}.

{lu'o lo broda} would have to be equivalent to {loi broda}
(and they would have to refer to more than one broda for
lu'o/loi not to be pointless). Neither would be used to
refer to a mass. If by massifying you mean something like
{lo gunma be lo broda}, then yes.

> > > From this I get either that you don't think
> > that
> > > {lo broda} and {loi broda} are the same
> > thing(s)
> > > in different predication relations
> >
> > I do think that they are the same thingS,
> > possibly
> > in the same predication relation even, but with
> > {loi broda} blocking the distributive
> > interpretation
> > and {lo broda} not blocking it. The plural is
> > significant
> > because if they were to refer to one thing the
> > distinction
> > between them vanishes.
>
> I don't get the last point.  {loi broda} is just
> some brodas of whom some property is predicated
> collectively, {lo broda} is the same guys without
> specifying whether the predication involved is
> one way or the other. What distinction is lost?

I meant that if there is only one broda, then it makes
no difference whether you use {lo broda} or {loi broda},
and since I take {loi} to be the marked one, using it
would not make much sense.

> > I thought you
> > were bringing
> > it up by suggesting that avatars/exemplars
> > would be
> > the constituents of an Urgoo, but I probably
> > misunderstood.
>
> I don't suppose that Urgoo, Mr. Broda, for
> example, has constituents.

OK. This is what you had said that led me astray:
"Given that I
also take you as saying that {lo broda} and {loi
broda} are the same thing only with difference in
declared distributivity, I suppose (given your
views on what lo broda is) that loi broda -- and
hence gunma1 generally -- is some sort of Urgoo,
at least in many cases.  In which case I suppose
that gunma2 is a list of
avatars/slices/exemplars/... .  Do I have any of
this close to right?"

My point here is simply that avatars/exemplars are
not what goes in the x2 of gunma.


> Which seems to mean
> that either you have abandoned  Mr. Broda as the
> referent of {lo broda} -- and with it several of
> the peculiar proerties of xorlo --

No, sorry. :)

But when Mr Broda is the referent of {lo broda},
being one single thing, distributivity is irrelevant.

>or you are
> using "not a single thing but several things" in
> a very poetic way, which I can't unpack while
> keeping it connected to the rest of the
> discussion.

Not a single mass/bunch/group thing, i.e. not a single
thing composed of several brodas. {lo broda} is a single
thing (a single broda) in generic reference.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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