[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

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

On 6/1/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/1/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The everyday sense of "set" is little more than "group".
>
> > In this sense "set", "mass" or
> > "group" are interchangeable.
>
> I don't see how that follows.

"This set of pencils costs ten dollars."

That's the ordinary, everyday use of "set". It means that all the pencils
together, not each one individually, cost ten dollars. I can't really think
of an ordinary use in which "this set" means "each member of this set".

7
> >           lei ci vitke cu klama le zdani
> >           The three guests went into the house together.
>
> Alright, perhaps they were so drunk that they had to lean on each
> other, and only through communal effort managed to topple into the
> house. (Otherwise they didn't do it together, though they did do it at
> the same time: "concurrently".)

"The three guests went into the house together" is an ordinary
English sentence, and it normally has no implications that they do it
leaning on each other. We can also say "the group went into the
house" and again there's no implication that they did it in any
special way. But anyway, let's assume that the situation is as you
describe it.


"The three guests went into the house together", the ordinary English
sentence, is translated as {lo ci vitke cu ze'i klama le zdani}.
"Together" has multiple definitions, and in that phrase, the
definition is "concurrently" - more specifically, "within a short
period of time, all entered the house".

The interpretation I offered, where they were leaning on each other,
is the interpretation of the Lojbanic example that uses {lei}.



> Though I wouldn't usually see people going in as that sort of mass,
> even if they were drunk, so I would seldom say {lei ci vitke...} in
> the first place.

What about "the three people went into the house carrying a piano"?


Same goes for that. They might carry the piano together, but they
enter the house separately.



> > Now someone asks you:
> >
> >         xo klama be le zdani cu se viska do
> >         How many goers-into-the-house did you see?
>
> Note that this question is a bit off. Usually one would ask "how many
> guests came in?" and not "how many acts of going in did you see?"

{xo klama} is not "how many acts of going?", that would be {xo nu klama}.
{xo klama} is "how many goers?".


That's "events", not "acts", but this is fully beside the point:

Usually one would ask "how many guests came in?" and not "how many
goers-in did you see?"




> > (B) Three. (The three guests.)
>
> Yes, this would usually be my answer, since I'd seldom see people
> going in "together"-as-in-{loi} in the first place.

Well, at least we agree on what answer we would give, if not for the same
motives.

> > (C) Four. (The three guests and the mass of three guests.)
>
> If I saw them come in as a mass, I wouldn't think that they came in
> individually, and vice-versa.

So you agree that the same situation can be truthfully described as each
of three people coming in, or as a group of three people coming in
together, depending on how one thinks of it?


Yep, it's up to you to choose how you see things. If you hope to
connect this to the "surrounding the building" example, you won't
succeed, as this is quite different. You have the choice to *see* the
people individually or together, but in expressing what you see, you
don't have the ability to use one word for both types of entities.

a) "the students (individually) went through the door" and
b) "together the students went through the door"

are both acceptable ways to see it, but "and wore hats" can only be
added to (a). If you add it to (b), then you're switching your
referent halfway through the sentence.




> >          le nanmu cu pamei bevri le pipno
> >          The men carried the piano singly.
> >
> >          le nanmu cu romei bevri le pipno
> >          The men carried the piano "all-ly" (all together).
> >
> >          le nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno
> >          The men carried the piano in pairs
> >
> > You could easily do the first two with your method, but the third one
> > would be more complicated.
>
> There's still no problem. And I think that you want {loi}:
>
>  {loi nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno}
>  "the mass of men pairishly carried the piano" /
>  "together the men pairishly carried the piano"
>
> This is not a problem because tanru have no fixed meaning. "Pairishly
> carried" could mean that the mass was a pair.

But the idea was that there were more than two men, let's say eight:

   le bi nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno
   The eight men carried the piano in pairs.

It wasn't the eight together that carried it.



"The eight men pairishly carried the piano"

I again don't see the problem. Being a tanru, "pairishly carried" is
open to interpretation. The sensible explanation here is that it means
"carried as one part of a pair". You'll have better luck without using
a tanru.


> You'll find that being
> explicit ("each of set A is in a group/mass with only one other of set
> A such that that group lifts a piano") is just as verbose in your
> method.

More precision requires more verbosity, I agree. The question is,
can you be non-verbose when you don't need the precision?


Yes. In relation to your method, in some cases not as much: I'd need
to throw in a few syllables. This is a matter of convenience.

The bigger question, though, is if you can employ your method without
switching between referents halfway through. This is a matter of
properness (assuming that it's improper to switch a referent halfway
through a sentence, which I assert that it is).



> You should just use the abstractor {su'u} to accomplish this vague
> "something to do with these students (i.e. groups of them)" thing that
> you'd like {lo} to do.

It's not something to do with the students, it's the very students
that I refer to with {le tadni}.


Some sort of (probably) grouping involving the students.



{lo su'u tadni} is not something that can surround buildings or carry
pianos or wear hats.


Why not? It can be *anything* that context suggests might be appropriate


Not that I know what it is, but it's something
along the lines of "studying", like {lo nu tadni}, {lo ka tadni}, or
{lo du'u tadni},


If it was something along the lines of those other abstracters, you'd
use them instead.


not something along the lines of "students" like
{lo tadni}, {loi tadni} or {le tadni}.


Exactly - and it's not supposed to be along the lines of students.
It's something that could mean pair-group of students, or a group of
students, or whatever.



> > > 13.1 "the students surround the building"
> > > 13.2 "the students wear hats"
> > >
> > > In (1), what is the referent? "A surrounder of the building": "a mass
> > > formed of students".
> >
> > Neither. "The students" does not have a single referent, it has many
> > referents, namely student A, student B, student C, ... and student Z.
>
> No. The students do not surround the building individually, therefore
> there are not 26 referents.

{le tadni} has 26 referents. This is independent of what you then predicate
about them.


Ok, your {le tadni} *might* have 26 referents, or it might have 1 (a
surrounder of the building), we don't know which and must decide based
on context.

Now, if you say that it *has*, ("the animal *is* a dog") then when you
say "surrounded the building", you mean that each one surrounded the
building - you don't change your mind as to the referent in the middle
of the sentence.



> There is only one "surrounder of the
> building", and therefore there is only one referent.

There are 26 people sorrounding the building.


How many surrounders of the building are there?



> In this case,
> you're treating "the students" as a mass that surrounds the building.

No, I am treating "surround the building" as a collective predicate and
"the students" as a plural reference, i.e. one with many referents rather
than one.


Is a plural reference like a mass, or a set (as I've defined them), or
something different?



> It doesn't matter that "the students" can potentially refer to either
> a mass or some individuals (a set) in your view.

It is the same people in both cases. It is not some people in one case
and a different entity in the other case.


"the students surround the building and wear hats"

The same thing that surrounds the building wears hats? The same each
things that wear hats each surround the building?



> > > The two referents are not the same. You can't pretend that they're the
> > > same for the sake of translating
> > >
> > > "the students surround the building and wear hats"
> > >
> > > verbatim into Lojban.
> >
> > In the pluralist version, it makes no sense of talking about the two referents,
> > because there are fifty referents involved, not two.
>
> I should have said "two types of referents". One of them is the 50
> students (that wear hats), one of them is the mass of 50 students
> (that surrounds the building).

No, in both cases it is only the 50 students that get referred, nothing else.


50 students get *mentioned*, but there is something that is implicitly
referred to when you say "50 students surround the building".


What differs is the kind of predication that you apply to them, a
distributive predicate in one case "wear hats" and a non-distributive predicate
in the other case "surround the building". But both predicates are predicated
of the very same things, the fifty students, and nothing else.




To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.