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

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

On 5/28/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I'd like to know is how you account for the building being
> surrounded. What surrounds it?

The students.

> Each student does *not* surround it.

Correct.

> What surrounds it is that "mass" of students.

That's one way of doing it, yes, and a valid way. That's the singularist way.
Another valid way is to use plural reference: "the students" is not taken
to refer to a single thing, but rather to many things at the same time.
It is not taken to have one referent but many.

> It's a type of thing
> that can be clearly recognized - we even have names for it: crowd,
> mob, swarm.

Indeed, those are useful concepts and we have several words to cover
them: gunma, girzu, bende, etc.

> You seem to have a belief that you can say that each student surrounds
> the building, but only when seen in the company of other students.

No, I have no such belief.

> And
> aha! You don't have to introduce some sort of strange and
> other-worldly entity that clearly doesn't belong. How efficient!

I don't think encompassing entities are other-worldly at all, they are
ordinary and useful concepts. But in some cases using plural reference
is more convenient.

> > 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".
>
> This doesn't strike you as unnecessarily complex?

No, I think treating outer quantifiers uniformly is the simplest option.
That way, when you say for example {ci ko'a} you don't have to keep
track of whether {ko'a} had been assigned with a non-distributivity marker
or not. You just need to remember what its referents are.

> > 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.
>
> Use {lu'o} (or whatever) after a {gi'e} in the same transient manner
> in which English occasionally uses "together". There are many other
> solutions.

{lu'o} belongs in selma'o LAhE. Its syntax consists of changing a sumti
into another sumti. It can't be used after {gi'e}.

> I think it deserves mention that I don't see it as a "neutral form" at
> all, since I don't think that such a thing exists, aside from as an
> ambiguous structure in your version of Lojban.

Consider this sentence: "The three men lifted the piano".

We can ask for more precision in many different ways:

(1) When did they do it, yesterday or last month?

(2) How many times did they do it, once or seven times?

(3) Where did they do it, inside the house or outside?

(4) How did they do it, with their bare hands or with the help of a crane?

(5) How did they do it, quickly or slowly?

(6) How did they do it, together or individually?

The precision obtained from answering (6) is no more special than the
precision obtained from answering any of the other questions.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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