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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

On 5/25/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/24/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You can be ambiguous between cat and elephant by saying "animal". You
> can be ambiguous between 1 and 20 by saying "some". You can be
> ambiguous between tree and happiness by saying something like
> "concept". But to be ambiguous between "each one of these did" and
> "the thing (with parts: each one of these) did" ... there is no
> superclass that I'm aware of.

How about "these did"? "These wore hats", "these surrounded the building".


That's not a superclass. It's the same thing - a noun phrase with the
word "together" left out because speakers don't like to include 3
syllables. "[Together], these [x] surround the building". Or
"[together], they surround the building".


Maybe the problem is "the thing with parts", but there is no thing with parts
here, there are just the things themselves. In this regard, you might find


Whenever you have a "mass", it's always a "thing made up of". For
example, three men that carry a piano collectively are actually
(together) a "carrier":

X is made up (of 'parts') "three men". X carries the piano.


this of interest: <http://philosophy.syr.edu/PDFs/Chap1-508.pdf>


I've partially read that. I found it interesting, but not particularly
enlightened. The author seemed to be confused in some aspects, for
example between "is a student" and "is part of a family of students" -
one does not follow from the other, and "traditional logic" doesn't
assert anything of the sort. If A and D are students, they can
together be thought of as /a/ student (just as together a hundred
car-makers are /a/ car-maker). If we said that A and D are
student-mates of class 704, then together they may be thought of as
/a/ student-mate of class 704. But you don't say "A and D are
students, so together they may be thought of as a student-mate of
something", in "traditional logic" or otherwise.


> 1 "some/all of the bears"
> 2 "some/all of the four bears"
> 3 "four of the bears"
> 4 "some/all of bears" ("some/all of [all of a set-of-bears]")
> 5 "all of the bears"
> 6 "four of bears" ("four of [all of a set-of-bears]")
> 7 "all of the four bears"
>
> So there are 7 things to say. You want to say them in 3 different ways:
>
> a: "individually, ..."
> b: "together, ..."
> c: "either individually or together, ..."
>
> 3 * 7 = 21. But you have the 7 variants, but only {loi} and {lo}. 2 *
> 7 = 14.

I don't know which 7 variants you mean, there are an indefinitely large
number of variants available.


More than obviously the 7 that gave above and below: the various
permutations of a blank, a {ro}, and a {vo} that I considered worth
mentioning under the circumstances. You will need to provide concrete
definitions for things like {su'o}, and your {su'o ja ro}, sure, but
let's have a look at just these 7. I think that they're very
demonstrative of the rest.



> Clearly, you need to sacrifice being able to say a few things.
> 7/21 (1 of 3 ways) are covered by loi - when you have loi, you mean
> 'b', so we have to worry only about saying 'a' and 'c' using the
> remaining 7 {lo}-based methods:
>
> 1 {lo cribe}
> 2 {lo vo cribe}
> 3 {vo lo cribe}
> 4 {lo ro cribe} - ambiguously "all of the bears"
> 5 {ro lo cribe} - individually "all of the bears"
> 6 {vo lo ro cribe}
> 7 {ro lo vo cribe}

Notice that 1, 2 and 4 are not how I would translate the English versions.
I might use:

1. su'o ja ro lo cribe
2. su'o ja ro lo vo cribe
4. su'o ja ro lo ro cribe


The important thing is how you would translate Lojban's blank outer. I
started with the English versions because they were not confused in
the same way I considered the Lojban versions to be. My translation of
a blank outer is "some, up to and including all", and so I said
"some/all".

How do you translate a blank outer? Do you simply "not commit to any
interpretation"? If one meant {no} as the outer, would it be
acceptable to use the blank? If {ro} /can't/ be the outer, then that's
very much like saying that {su'o} is the default for a blank outer, I
think.


> But where did your...
>
> 4:"individually, an unspecified quantity of all of a relevant group of X"
> e.g. "some of all the hats were beautiful"

  su'o le ro mapku cu melbi

> 5:"ambiguously, all of an unspecified quantity of X"

Not sure what you mean there. In what sense ambiguously?


In the sense of "either together or individually, but not specifically
either". "Ambiguous" means "open to more than one interpretation". So
whatever you have for "either together or individually", that thing is
ambiguous, because it can mean either.



> ...disappear to? (Not to imply that I think that those are the proper
> ways to say those things, only that they're they ways that you say
> them.)

Some of them yes, some not.

> And how do you say 2 and 3 both individually, and ambiguously?
>
>
> Point being, you don't have enough Lojbanic structures available to be
> able to add "ambiguously", without scattering what is a very good and
> consistent method. And that's what has happened.

There are in fact an excess of structures available. If Lojban had had
a single gadri things would have been so much easier.


Then why don't you have a specific structure for "ambiguously"
("either together or individually, but not specifically either"), in
the same way that there's a specific structure for "together" ({loi})
and a specific structure for "individually" ({lo}).




> Putting aside togetherness/individuality
>
>  "all the hats were beautiful"
>
> can very well translate to
>
>  {ro lo mapku cu melbi}
>
> based on the assertions that you made regarding inner and outer
> quantifiers in all of the latter half of your last response.

Not sure what you mean by "putting aside togetherness/individuality".
{ro lo mapku cu melbi} says of the hats that each of them is beautiful.


and how is

{ro lo mapku cu melbi}

different from your

{lo ro mapku cu melbi}

aside from how one is supposedly ambiguous, and the other means
explicitly "individually"?



> Here's a rather interesting statement: You don't have any real meaning
> for inner {ro}. "All of some group" is handled by {ro lo mapku}. But
> because you could, you gave inner {ro} (with a blank outer, at least)
> the meaning:
>
>  {lo ro mapku}
>  (some?, all?) out of all of the relevant group of hats
>  "all the hats" (e.g. "...in the store")
>
> which, based on the rules that you clearly laid out for inner and
> outer quantifiers, is effectively the same as:
>
>  {ro lo mapku}
>  all of the relevant group of hats

The closest translations for me would be:

{ro lo mapku} = each hat
{lo ro mapku} = all hats


All of what hats? You're clearly not talking about *all* hats. You're
talking about all of a relevant group of hats. "All of the bears" (in
the zoo), "all of the hats" (in the store). There's a group there.


The first one has to be distributive. The second one may or may not be,
depending on the context.


What is {ro lo ro mapku}? "Each hat out of all the hats"? How about
{re lo ro mapku}? "Each of two hats out of all the hats"? So omitting
the outer means that it is ambiguous?


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