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

On 5/28/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/27/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 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.
>
> Then I don't understand why the above was an absurd misrepresentation
> of your position.

Because

1 {le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e sruri le dinju}

is not the correct way to say

2 "The fifty students wore hats and surrounded the building."


But I didn't say that your position implied that. I said that that's what
*my* view allows, i.e. the view that does not introduce an encompassing
entity allows to use a distributive and a non-distributive predicate with
the same referent. Your view disallows it, because under your proposed
interpretation of {le} the Lojban claim would entail that there was an entity
that both wore a hat and surrounded the building.


In fact, (2) is not the 'correct' way to say it either - (2) is a
shortened form of

3 "The fifty students wore hats and together surrounded the building."


I think (2) is proper and correct English. (3) is also correct, and more
precise.



You would say:

 {le muno tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e sruri le dinju}
 "50 students wore hats and surrounded the building"

I would consider that incorrect, and would rather say:

 {le muno tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'e lu'o lego'i sruri le dinju}
 "50 students wore hats and together they surrounded the building"

(Perhaps {loi} is better than {lu'o})
(I'm not perfectly sure about {lego'i}, maybe one of
{vo'a/ko'a/la'edi'u/ra} is more correct)


That's ungrammatical. {gi'e} connects bridi-tails, which consist of
a selbri followed by any number of sumti. The structure is as follows:

<sumti> ... [(<selbri1> <sumti> ...) gi'e (<selbri2> <sumti> ...)]

The fronted sumti are common to the two selbri, the trailing sumti go
with each of the selbri. You can't introduce a sumti between {gi'e} and
<selbri2>.

In order to connect two full bridi, you need to use {i je} in afterthought
mode, or {ge ... gi ...} in forethough mode. So either:

le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku i je lu'o ra sruri le dinju

or:

ge le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi lu'o ra sruri le dinju

The {cu} in {lu'o le go'i cu sruri} cannot be omitted, because otherwise
you get a single sumti made from the tanru {go'i sruri}. {loi} can't be used
instead of {lu'o} there, because {loi} can't take a bare sumti as a
complement. You could say, however, something like {loi ro ra}
or {loi ro le go'i}.

{la'e di'u} would refer to the fact that the students wore hats, not to the
students. For example, you could say:

  le mu no tadni cu dasni lo mapku i la'e di'u cizra
  The fifty students wore hats. That was weird.


Of course, if you think that {lu'o lego'i} is a big headache, then
perhaps you'll support something like:

 {le muno tadni cu dasni lo mapku gi'eloi sruri le dinju}


That's ungrammatical too. {loi sruri} is a sumti and after {gi'e} you
need a selbri.

I don't think the expression {lu'o le go'i} is a big headache. The big
headache is having to separate the sumti into two sumti every time
you need to combine distributive and non-distributive predicates.


But I guess onwards with demonstrating that your (and McKay's)
perception of masses is incorrect. I'll remind you of my objection to
your conception of "mass":

-quote-
On 5/27/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> The non-singularist view holds that you can make a predication about
> several things without having to distribute it or having to introduce
> an encompassing single entity.

How exactly is this sensible? X is a surrounder of the building, but
only when you look at it as her being in the company of A..W? X the
groupmate surrounds the building, but X does not? No, X the groupmate
does not surround the building. A..X, together/as a group/mass
surround the building.

A quote (of supposedly McKay) that I found:
 The fact that some individuals are surrounding a building does not
automatically imply that some single individual (of any kind)
surrounds the building.

Yes, it does imply that. In this case, the mass of students is that
entity. Just because a mass does not take on a distinct physical shape
does not mean it's not there.

Let's say that 10 soldiers then surrounded the students (together, and
not in the sense that these 10 soldiers each hugged a student). We
have a way to say this: "the squad surrounded the students". Yes, we
do explicitly treat groups as entities. You can't simply say "well,
look! No definite entity is mentioned explicitly, and I won't bother
to see if an implicit entity exists. After all, it's ridiculous to
think that some things seen together could just 'magically' be seen as
a new entity, right? ...and therefore no entity exists".

-endquote-


But in my view {le sonci cu sruri le tadni}, "the soldiers surrounded
the students", does not require any new entity either. The things
being surrounded can be more than one just as much as the
surrounders. Any argument of the predicate can be distributive
or non-distributive.


> > Ok, so your rule for using {lo} distributively/ambiguously is "if the
> > outer is blank, it is ambiguous, otherwise, distributive", correct?
>
> For any sumti whatsoever, not just for {lo}, I take an outer quantifier
> to be distributive, yes.

I take this to mean that your{re loi ci nanmu} means something
entirely different from "(only) 2 of the group of 3 men" ("...carried
the piano"), yes?


In my view {re loi ci nanmu} means the same as {re lo ci nanmu}, because
the non-distributivity introduced by {loi} is then cancelled by the
distributivity
of the outer {re}. You'd have to say {loi re lo ci nanmu} to get a
non-distributive
"two of three".


>    Q <sumti> cu broda
>    Q of the referents of <sumti> are such that each is/does broda.
>
> For me, {lo} simply says nothing about distributivity, just as {lo mlatu} says
> nothing about the colour of cats. If you want to call that "ambiguous", suit
> yourself, but it is getting a bit jarring.

For me, {lo} implies distributivity, just as {lo mlatu} implies
"feline". You seem to be unaware of my position: I don't think that
{lo} is ambiguous. To me, it means the exact same thing each time. It
doesn't mean "individually" in one situation, and "as a mass" in
another, all based on context. No.


I do understand that. That is very close to the traditional view. That's
basically how CLL defines it, except perhaps that you differ in the
interpretation of the inner quantifier, but I do understand that you would
use {lo} only with distributive predicates.


Here is a simple demonstration:

 your{lo mu tadni sruri lo pa grana}

could mean either:

 "together the five students surrounded the pole"
 "the five students each surrounded the pole"

So, yes, I want to call that ambiguous, and I'm perfectly correct in
my usage of the word. I find your insistence that "ambiguous" refers
only to gismu-like words with multiple meanings to be disagreeable,
both with me and with the common dictionary definitions linked to
earlier.


The marking of distributivity/non-distributivity properly belongs with
the selbri, not with the sumti. "Together" and "indiviually" in English
are adverbs, they modify the verb phrase, not the noun phrase, that's
why in English you can use the same noun phrase with a distributive
and a non-distributive predicate at the same time:

The fifty students (wore hats individually) and (surrounded the
building together)

Two predicates, "...wore hats individually" and "...surrounded the building
together" are predicated of the same referents, the fifty students.

The adverbs "individually" and "together" can help make the predicate
more precise, but they are not obligatory. This is similar to the way you can
say: "The students walked quickly" and just "the students walked". The
adverb "quickly" makes the predicate more precise, it excludes the possibility
that they walked slowly, but does not make "the students walked" ambiguous.
An ambiguous phrase is something like "time flies like an arrow" which
can be parsed in (at least) two different ways. But nevermind, keep
using ambiguous in your sense if it makes you happy. In your sense, my
{lo} is ambiguous, yes. I just don't think that says something very useful.

In Lojban, for whatever reasons (some good ones and some bad ones),
the distributivity of a place of a predicate ended up being marked on the
sumti rather than on the selbri. But it is still useful to have a neutral form
of the sumti, so that you can combine distributive and non-distributive
predication without having to replicate the sumti.


> If the speaker says {lo ro cribe poi zvati le dalpanka}, the very act of saying
> those words brings bears not in the zoo into the universe of discourse

Sure, but just because you 'brought a whole bunch of bears into the
discourse', doesn't mean that your{lo ro cribe} will refer to all of
them later. For example, we might talk about all bears in the forest,
and then I might ask you your"did you see all the bears when you went
to the zoo?" question:

xu do pu viska lo ro cribe ca lo nu do vitke le dalpanka
Did you see all bears when you visited the zoo?

The your{lo ro cribe} would refer not to "all bears that have ever
been brought up" (i.e. bears in the forest), but clearly to a
contextually *sensible* group of bears, that is, the bears in the zoo.


That's right.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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