Re: TECH: Transparency / Opaqueness

[jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU]

Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI> writes:
> Now I'm wondering what would happen, if we said in
> general that {le} is used for transparency and {lo}
> for opaqueness. Already the implicit outer/inner
> quantifiers seem to imply this: {su'o lo ro} vs.
> {ro le su'o}, i.e. sampling vs. grabbing them all.

.i lo xrula cu te mlepurdi la veion lemi mrita'e

This, with the examples, is the best statement of the problem that I've seen
so far, and a very believable solution.

I'm not comfortable with the symbolism of Quine's opaque vs. transparent
 metaphor;
I prefer a metaphor of formal vs. actual parameters of a Boolean valued
 function,
similar to Desmond's usage with his "dr" language.

JCB originally defined "le" to mark a sumti as having an "in-mind" referent so
that the referent did not actually have to satisfy the predicate; he devoted
several paragraphs to "that man is [really] a woman: _le_ va nanmu cu ninmu.
Nonetheless, his emphasis is on the referent being specifically chosen by the
speaker.  We should be sure that when the meaning of "le" is finally nailed
down, a counter-to-fact s-bridi will still be legal, but the counter-to-fact
possibility should not over-dominate the design choices.

The word "mass" has been used to refer to the referent of "lo" as Veion has
suggested it be used; I paraphrase the usage in these nearly equivalent ways:

    lo broda is any member of the set lo'i broda (members really satisfy the
                s-bridi)
    The referent of "lo broda" is potentially any member of the set.
    From the point of view where "lo broda" is written, different set members
                are more-or-less interchangeable.  This is my interpretation
                of the "Mr. Rabbit" metaphor that JCB used to explain TLI "lo".

These differ from lo'e broda, a typical item actually satisfying broda.  They
also differ from "lei" or "loi" which is the determiner used in Lojban for
 "mass".
Often appearing in a discussion of masses is the "team" (bende).  One can use
"loi" to say "loi se bende cu zbasu le dinju" (the members of the team, as a
mass, build the house", whereas it is not true that any one member does the
whole job, the members are not interchangeable as Veion's version of "lo" would
imply, the needed quantification is that all (ro loi) the members participate
rather than some (su'o lo), and it is not reasonable to say that a "set" does
the building so that "le bende cu zbasu..." is deprecated.

I hope this doesn't muddy the water excessively.

James F. Carter        Voice 310 825 2897       FAX 310 206 6673
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