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

On 6/6/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:


Ok, so what does "lo tadni" mean? "The bears" quite definitely implies
there being some quantity of bears.


{lo tadni} has one or more students as referents, yes. That's different
from saying that the sumti has an outer quantifier, explicit or implicit.

What an outer quantifier, if present, would do is indicate the number of
those referents such that each of them has the property predicated by
the selbri. That's just as in first order predicate logic. But the absence
of a quantifier does not imply that there is at least one of the referents
such that it, by itself, has the property predicated by the selbri. It may
happen that none of the referents has, by itself, the property in question.


I guess the underlying difference here is that you think the slot
({tersum}?) is marked, while I think that the sumti is marked.


Yes, that's the key difference. (BTW, the lujvo would be {tersu'i},
all brivla must end in a vowel, so you can't use a CVC rafsi in the
final position of a lujvo.)

When we say something like {ko'a broda gi'e brode}, the sumti {ko'a}
is filling two slots at the same time, the x1 of broda and the x1 of
brode. This means that if we wanted to mark one of the slots as distributive
and the other as non-distributive, we would be forced to separate the two
slots. One way of doing this is by expanding the sentence:

    ko'a broda i je ko'a brode

now we can mark each slot correspondingly.
Another way is to use {ckaji}:

   ko'a ckaji ge lo ka ce'u broda gi lo ka ce'u brode

and again we can mark each slot correspondingly.

(I used {ke'a} instead of {ce'u} before. {ke'a} is actually to mark the slots
of relative clauses, and {ce'u} is the word used to mark the slots of
properties.
{ce'u} was one of the last cmavo added to the language and I often forget
it and mistakenly use {ke'a} for properties too.)

To separate two sumti at the same time we can use {ckini}:

 lo tadni lo stizu cu ckini lo ka lu'o ce'u [xi pa] bevri lu'o ce'u [xi re]

(The subscripts are actually not needed, because each {ce'u} is
taken to indicate a different slot. This is different from {ke'a} which,
when repeated in the same clause, indicates that the slots are filled
by the same thing.)

If we want to separate three sumti, there is no gismu, but we can use
a {lujvo}, {cibyki'i}: x1 x2 and x3 are related by relationship x4
and so on with {vonki'i}, {mumki'i}, etc. Needless to say, this is never
actually done in practice, this is just a way of analyzing things.


However, you seem to be against using gunma at all. We'll have to
resolve that first.


I am not at all against using {gunma}, or {girzu}, or {bende}, or {selcmi},
or {kanmi}, or any other gismu that refer to groups of things as single
things. I don't have any problems with them, and I think they can be very
convenient words.


I've asked you a question:
explain how Alice relates to the students that surround the building,
in a way that is different from how she relates to the students that
wear hats.


And my answer is: she relates to them in exactly the same way, because
they are the same students in both cases. The relationship is that she is
one of them. Your question has a false assumption, so I can't give you
the answer you want.


We have 26 students in blue shirts stand on 26 marks (the letters A-Z)
arranged so that they surround the building. We tell them to go
inside, and call out 26 students in red shirts to stand on the marks.
Now, both the blue students and the red students had the
"non-distributive" property of surrounding the building, correct?


Correct.


Now, who or what really had this property? Each of the 26 students?


No, the 26 blue shirted ones together had the property and also the 26
red shirted ones together had it.


No: the 26 students together. Well, what does that mean? Why is it
that I can't swap blue-A, with red-A, and then say that "[the 25 blue
students and the 1 red student] surrounded the building" ({...sruri lo
dinju})? Because they're not of the same group/mass.


Right. Or in other words, without mentioning masses, because 25 of the
blue shirted students and one of the red shirted students together did
not have the property. It's not any 26 students at all that have the property
it's 26 particular students that have it.


> > Ok. So it's the very same students that surround the building
> > individually, and that compose the group that surrounds the building.
> > Right?
>
> They wear the hats individually and surround the building together, yes.

No, I mean that they compose the *group* that surrounds the building.
I expect you to disagree with this.


I don't disagree with that. Both ways of describing the situation are valid:
the students surround the building together, or the group surrounds the
building by itself. It amounts to the same thing. There is nothing strange
about having more than one way of describing one and the same situation.


> > The issue is what lo means, what lu'o means, what loi means.
>
> lo: converts a selbri into a sumti, selecting the selbri's x1 argument.
> loi: like {lo}, and in addition it marks the slot which the sumti occupies
>      as non-distributive
> lu'o: It marks a sumti so that the slot it occupies is non-distributive.

(wait, which one is the one that marks it as distributive?)


An outer quantifier, as in ordinary first order predicate logic.


Here is a way that the "marking of a slot for distributivity" can be
explained/expanded:

 lu'o le tadni cu sruri lo dinju
 lei tadni cu sruri lo dinju
expands to
 [da poi sruri lo dinju] cu gunma [le tadni]

Perhaps you have an equally sensible way to expand it? Perhaps even a
way that does not involve {gunma}?


In terms of singularist first order predicate logic? No, there is no other
way, because first order predicate logic does not have plural reference,
so the only way to do it is the singularist way of introducing a separate
single thing, the mass or group.


So you would consider

 [da poi sruri lo dinju] cu gunma [le tadni]

to be a correct and complete expanded form of

 lu'o le tadni cu sruri lo dinju
 lei tadni cu sruri lo dinju

correct?


They would describe the same situation, yes.


> > I'm happy with perhaps {loi nanla cu bevri
> > loi stizu le pa purdi}, because I can choose to see them as a
> > group/mass that carries over another group/mass.
>
> Including a situation where each boy carries just one chair?
> What do you think of {loi tadni cu dasni loi mapku}?

If each boy carried one chair, I would likely see it as {lo nanla cu
bevri lo stizu} instead. Otherwise, I can see it in a general sense,
not care how many boys or how many chairs there really are, just think
of both as masses, and say {loi nanla cu bevri loi stizu}.


Suppose you just don't know the details. Someone told you, in English,
that the boys took the chairs to the garden, but they didn't say whether
each boy carried one chair, or whether some boy carried more than one,
or whether some boys carried a chair together. How do you report that
in Lojban? If you use {loi}, then it would appear that your {loi} matches
my {lo}: it indicates nothing about the distribution of chairs among the
boys.


But if I
clearly saw that each boy carried a chair (as, say, each soldier in a
formation might carry a rifle), then why wouldn't I say it with {lo}?


Of course I can do that too if I want:

   ro lo nanla cu bevri pa lo stizu

The question is, am I forced to specify a particular kind of distribution when
I don't need to specify a particular kind of distribution?

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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