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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/27/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> All I'm saying is that the view that
> does not introduce any encompassing entity is, for me at least, the most
> useful. That way I can say:
>
> le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e sruri le dinju
> "The fifty students wore hats and surrrounded the building."
>
> without claiming that there was any single entity that both wore a hat
> and surrounded the building.
This is a somewhat absurd misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of
my position. I've never said that this entity (the mass of students)
would wear a single hat; this is clearly and absolutely wrong. But
this entity /would/ surround the building. We say two things: "50
things wear hats", "1 thing surrounds the building".
Right. I suppose it doesn't bother you that the same phrase {le mu no
tadni} is being used to refer to the fifty things and also to the one thing at
the same time. Personally, I prefer to say that it just refers to the
fifty things,
and that both claims are about those fifty things only. But in the end it
doesn't really matter. If we both agree that the sentence is proper Lojban,
and we both understand what it means, it is of little consequence how we
analyze it. Each can choose his own explanation. We would only have a
problem if one of us thought that the phrase was normal Lojban and the
other thought it made some weird claim.
> > When {su'o} is used, you don't mean some special number called "some".
> > You mean that the listener should make a best guess as to what the
> > number could be (maybe it's five, maybe it's all of whatever number is
> > the inner).
>
> I think it would be more correct to say that {su'o} is a special quantifier
> (if not strictly a number) called "some". For example, in:
>
> naku su'o prenu cu klama
> It is not the case that at least some person came.
>
> you don't want the listener to make any best guess for {su'o}. Any number
> you replace {su'o} with will make a claim different from the one intended.
How are the following different:
naku su'o lo prenu cu klama
naku lo prenu cu klama
Not very different. The point of the example was to show that {su'o} is not
an invitation to the listener to make a best guess at a number.
> lo tadni pu sruri le dinju
> "Students surrrounded the building."
>
> su'o lo tadni pu sruri le dinju
> "At least one student surrounded the building."
How are these claims different, aside from the first English one
meaning "at least 2" because of the plural form?
The second one for me says that there was at least one student that
surrounded the building him or herself, because outer quantifiers are
distributive. The first one does not make that unlikely claim.
> lo cribe pu citka ro le mi jbari
> "Bears ate all my berries."
>
> su'o lo cribe pu citka ro le mi jbari
> "At least one bear ate all my berries."
Again, how are these different?
The first one does not claim that at least one bear ate all the berries
by itself, while the second one does.
> > > > > {ro lo mapku} = each hat
> > > > > {lo ro mapku} = all hats
> > > >
> > > > All of what hats?
> > >
> > > All things that count as hats.
> >
> > All things that count as hats are All hats (existing now, future,
> > past, hypothetically, etc.). Your "all" is very different. Your "all"
> > means "all of some relevant/contextually-sensible group".
>
> No. As I said before "all hats" is contextually sensible, because
> what counts as a hat is contextually sensible, but it does not
> mean "all contextually sensible hats" because when you mention
> "contextually sensible hats" you immediately bring into the picture
> hats that are not contextually sensible as well. In other words, context
If you and I are talking of Alice and Bob talking about "all hats", my
saying that "all hats means all contextually sensible hats" does
**not** bring "all other hats" into *Alice and Bob's* conversation. It
brings it into *our* conversation.
Right. I probably misunderstand your use of quotes then. When you say
"X" means "Y", you don't mean that you can replace X with Y and get the
same meaning, then?
> sensibility is something that you can discuss in the metalanguage,
> when discussing what a phrase means, it is not something that you
> can incorporate into the phrase without changing its meaning.
Luckily, we're not incorporating it into the phrase, rather we're
talking about its meaning within the phrase.
OK, in that case we may be in agreement. {lo ro mapku} refers to all things
that count as hats in the context where the phrase is used, not to things that
may count as hats in other contexts, since those other things by definition
are inaccessible in the context where the phrase was used. It cannot therefore
be equivalent to another phrase with a restriction in it.
> > > > "All of the bears" (in
> > > > the zoo), "all of the hats" (in the store). There's a group there.
> > >
> > > When you make the restriction explicit, yes.
> >
> > There is no explicit restriction. You said that {lo ro cribe} meant
> > "all bears that are in the zoo".
>
> I hope I never said that. "All bears that are in the zoo" would be something
> like {lo ro cribe poi zvati le dalpanka}.
Quoting you:
"
xu do pu viska lo ro cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka
Did you see all bears when you visited the zoo?
I don't have any specific bears in mind there, because I don't even know
how many bears the zoo has. I do intend to ask about all the bears at
the zoo, but all I know about them is that they are all the bears at the
zoo. I am not using the description to get at some referents that I have
otherwise in mind. There is only the description that generates the referents
for me. I am certainly not asking about all bears that exist in the universe.
"
And as far as I can tell, you're still asserting that {lo ro cribe}
could very well mean {lo ro cribe poi zvati le dalpanka}.
If by that you mean that {lo ro cribe} in one context could have the same
referent that {lo ro cribe poi zvati le dalpanka} might have in a different
context, then yes, I think they could. But the referent is not the same as
the meaning. {lo va danlu} and {lo va cribe} could have the same referent,
while their meanings are different.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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