Re: "any"

[CJ FINE <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

On Mon, 17 Oct 1994, Gerald Koenig responded to pc:

>         This makes it clear just how pleiomorphic  and ambiguous this
>         little word of English can be.  I think if we ever get it
>         working properly in lojban it will have to take many different
>         forms. Just as the connective "and" did when lojbanized. I am
>         still opposed to trying to capture all the English meaning and
>         behavior of "any" in one word.

Absolutely. But is anybody trying to do so?
>
>         Looking at the above analysis it appears that the meaning can be
>         broken down into three elements.
>                 1. exactly one apple is under discussion.

I'm not even convinced of this, but let it pass for the moment.

>                 2. It is a typical apple. No outliers are under
>                 consideration.

Roughly, but I don't think you mean 'typical', which is after all an
idealisation. I suspect you mean 'ordinary' - 'fadni' in Lojban.


    3. It is a randomly selected apple.

What has 'random' got to do with it? If I say I will eat any apple, you
may then with great care pick out an apple to give me - this is not
random, it is merely that I am explicitly forgoing any participation in
selecting the apple.

 >                 4. (2) and (3) are connected by the logical &.
>
>                 So we have one typical and random apple:
>                 In lojban this goes:
>                 pa lomci je cunso plise       (or possibly):
>                 lo paboi lomci plise ije cunso plise?

I don't know what you mean by 'lomci' - it looks to me as if you have
tried to coin a brivla in back-formation from the rafsi 'lom'.

So building on your idea, I think it is something like
        lo fadni je se cuxna be no mi be'o plise

which would function OK as a dictionary definition of 'any apple' in this
sense but is not terribly useful in everyday use. But maybe if we need to
express th8s precisely, this is how to do it.


        Colin