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

On 6/9/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/8/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Suppose Alice and Betty are the only students
> > in the group, and the rest of the people surrounding the building are
> > professors, is "Students surround the building" true?
>
> Yes, it becomes much more apparent (to me, at least) once written out
> in Lojban. It's not {la alis cu sruri lo dinju}, it's {lu'o la alis cu
> sruri dinju}.

My understanding of our disagreement so far had been as follows:

(1) loi tadni cu sruri le dinju
(2) lu'o lo tadni cu sruri le dinju
(3) lo tadni cu sruri le dinju

We both agreed (I thought) in which situations (1) would be true and
in which situations it would be false. We both agreed that {loi} could
be decomposed as {lu'o lo}, so that (2) says the same as (1). We


Yes, I think


disagreed on whether the {lu'o} component could be optionally omitted.
I held that {lu'o} was optional, and so could be dropped when context
made it unnecessary, as in the example of students surrounding a
building, and you held that {lu'o} could not be dropped because if it
was dropped the predicate {sruri} had to be necessarily taken as
distributive.


Yes. We also disagree on how non-distributivity should be marked. For
example, I think that the following is grammatical under your rules,
but I find the interpretation infeasible (or awkward), since it uses
both "markers":

lu'o ro lo tadni cu sruri lo dinju



But now the disagreement seems to occur at an earlier step.
We no longer seem to agree about the meaning of (1). For example,
if there is a chain of rocks around the building, with a gap filled by
Alice, who is a student, you would say that (1) is true and I would
say it is false.


loi rokci cu sruri le dinju

What would you say of that, assuming that the surroundment wouldn't
work if Alice wasn't there? Would it, too, be false?

(In my mind, I find it hard to picture Alice and the rocks as forming
a group in the first place. Masses aren't "forced" in the same way
that members of a mathematical set can be. Just naming a random
collection of objects and calling them a mass doesn't seem right,
unless you can clearly visualize that they together "are". But this is
all mostly speculative/intuitive.)

As I've said, this is an issue of pragmatics. The speaker would likely
say "[the rocks and Alice] surrounded the building" in the first
place. For the case of the many students, and the one professor, Zoe,
the speaker would likely say "the people surrounded...", or "the
academics surrounded..." in the first place. Using the example of the
single professor and the many students (equivalent to the Alice/rocks
example), the following would be false:

la zox cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe surrounds the building"
[la zox e lo tadni] cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe and the students surround
the building"
lu'o po'o la zox cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe is the only thing the
surrounder/surroundment of the building consists of"

and the following would be true:

lu'o la zox cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe surrounds the building"
lu'o [la zox e lo tadni] cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe and the students
surround the building"
loi tadni cu sruri lo dinju "the students surround the building"
loi ctuca cu sruri lo dinju "the professor surrounds the building"
lu'o po'o [la zox e lo tadni] cu sruri lo dinju "Zoe and the students
are the only thing the surrounder/surroundment of the building
consists of"


For me it is false because it is not the case that
students surround the building in that case. For you it is true because
it is the case that a group of things that includes at least one student
surrounds the building.

Do we at least agree on what we disagree about?


I think so



mu'o mi'e xorxes


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