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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/29/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > What surrounds the building?
> > (The students.)
> > Does each student surround the building?
> > (No.)
> > Then what is it that surrounds the building?
> > (The students.)
> > So you mean the students together?
> > (No, the students.)
> > ...
>
> The last one should be: "Yes, the students do it together."
>
Your definition of "together" seems very strange.
I didn't offer a definition of "together". The sentence "the students do it
together" is perfectly standard English as far as I can tell.
No definition described at
http://www.answers.com/together?ff=1
seems to cover it, rather, they indicate that "together" is used to
describe masses of things, or reciprocal relationships.
3.b. By joint or cooperative effort:
We ironed the entire load of clothes together.
The students surrounded the building together.
"The 50 students (individually)" refers to each entity, that is, we
have a set of 50 entities that are students in mind. If we say that
"the students run", we mean that it is true that each student of this
set of 50 runs. If any of the students do not run, the statement is
false.
"Together the students" refers to the students as a collective entity.
Sometimes, this collective entity can be seen as a "crowd" or a "mob".
When people look at groups of people, they never have trouble
recognizing that this amalgamation is an entity on its own - that is,
they see a forest, and not 10000 trees, they see a book, and not 500
pages. "The forest is burning", and not "3542 trees are burning". So
when we say "together the students surround the building", we mean
this thing that is a mass of students surrounds the building.
Can you offer something similar? It can be as crude as you'd like to
start, I just want /something/.
I can only repeat what I have already said: "The students" refers to all
the students in question, namely to Ann, Bob, Charles, Diana, ... and Zoe.
We can predicate things about them in many different ways. We can say
that they do things together, we can say that they do things individually, we
can say that they do things in groups. In all cases, we are predicating things
about the same students, i.e. about Ann, Bob, Charles, Diana, ... and Zoe.
Some things, like wearing hats, they do individually. Other things, like
surrounding the building, they do together. Some things, like holding hands,
they do in pairs, some things, like talking to one another, they do in groups
of three or four. But it is always the same students that do all these things.
Some things it is not even clear or important whether we consider they do
them together or individually. If I say "I see the students", I can
think of it as
saying that I see each of them or that I see them all together, it makes little
difference. What's so difficult to understand? Certainly it is not the informal
description that can cause any trouble. If it's the formalism that bothers you,
then you will have to go to one of the references I gave you. I went through
McKay's book and I didn't find any inconsistencies. I can certainly not explain
to you the whole formalism of plural reference with all the theorems in a post
here, perhaps if you find some dubious point we can discuss it, but nothing
you've said suggests that it is something in the formalism that bothers you.
You simply assert that plural reference is not sensible.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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