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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/30/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
This has to do with grammatical aspects. For example, I might start
reading a book, pause halfway through, and then resume and complete
reading the book. Now, if you were to start reading the book, pause,
hand it over to me, and I resumed and completed reading it, we would
say that we read the book "together (3b)".
Only if we read it to each other, right? If I read half the book to myself,
then you come into the room and I leave, and you read the second
part of the book, we probably wouldn't say "we read the book together".
(7.2) 25 students stand on 25 marks, leave, and then another 25 to
stand on the other marks. Together (3b), the students surround the
building.
(7.3) Two students stands on 25 marks for 10 seconds per mark.
Together (3b), the students surround the building.
There's clearly something amiss with (7.2) and (7.3).
Right, in those cases at no point in time would the building be
surrounded by students.
(7.5) A piece of graphite exists, and a hollow piece of wood exists.
Together (3b), they are a pencil.
It is perfectly sensible to say "a piece of graphite and a graphite tube
constitute a pencil together", but in order for them to constitute a pencil
together it is not enough that each of them exists, they must also be
arranged in a certain way. Similarly for the students around the building,
it is not enough that they occupy some space for them to surround the
building, they must occupy the space at the same time for the
surrounding to take place.
What is a composite entity, or "mass"? It is something whereby all its
component parts complete a piece of the pie (if you will). I am a
human; together (3b) my heart, lungs, bones, brain, consciousness,
[etc.] complete parts of "human". None does the job on its own, but
the job is completed (a composite entity exists) through their
combined efforts.
(As I've noted before, most if not all things are masses/composites.)
Yes and no. A human body can be thought of as a composite of
organs, but we (or at least I) don't normally think of it that way, I think
of it as one thing. I would never say "my organs are lying on this bed"
when I mean that my body is. Not even "my organs are lying on the
bed together". I suspect you would not argue for {lei mi rango cu vreta
le vi ckana} either. A body is not just a mass of organs.
Where did you find a copy of the book?
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0199278148
states that the release date is July. Is it available elsewhere?
The whole thing (at least in draft form) used to be online a couple of
years ago, when we were discussing this on the BPFK forum.
Upon further reading,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plural-quant/
and many other sources of "plural quantification/predication" seem to
talk of the sort of plural quantification that we have in Lojban -
that is, inner/outer quantifiers.
Outer quantifiers, as I understand them, are always singular
(i.e. distributive) quantification. Lojban doesn't strictly have plural
quantifiers, only plural reference.
The "singularist viewpoint" that
they target seems to be the requirement of first order logic to split
something like "the apple and orange were on the table" into two
sentences, and the ensuing inability to cope with reciprocality. I
could be wrong, since I didn't read it in sufficient detail, but this
sort of "singularism" seems to have little to do with the
"singularism" that you identify my viewpoint as supporting. I would be
grateful if you could direct me to some material (perhaps a
subsection) that discusses your "singularism" specifically.
The key difference between singular and plural quantification is this:
In singular quantification, variables can only take one value at a time.
(Each student at a time, or the mass of students as a single entity,
for example)
In plural quantification, variables can take more than one value at once.
(All the students at once, for example.)
I think the first paragraph of the wikipedia article describes it reasonably
well.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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