Re: mut

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>]

la kolin cusku di'e

>I don't agree that 'do' is a mass: it seems to me much more reasonable
>to individuate it.

I think it's a good thing that it be taken in general as a mass. Masses
are much safer than distributive individuation when it comes to issues
of scopes and such. For example:

            do dunda lo xrula la djan

Does that mean "you (all) gave a flower to John"? Or does it mean
"each of you gave a flower to John"? I think the first one. Or:

            ko na dunda lo titla la djan

Is that "Don't give sweets to John!", or is it "Don't everyone of you
give sweets to John!", meaning that it's ok if only some of you do?

>I suggest that almost all uses of your terkancu to unmassify will be
>followed by a 'lei' or 'loi', in which case the appropriate question is,
>why has the utterer chosen to use a massifier and then immediately
>counteracted it? Is there a difference between 're lei prenu' and 're le
>prenu'?

I was mostly thinking of pronouns. The book says that personal
pronouns already work the way I suggest, so at least in that case
I have the canon on my side. And no, I think there would be no
difference between {re lei prenu} and {re le prenu}.

Come to think of it, there should be no difference either between
{piro lei ci prenu} and {piro le ci prenu}. Not only are count numbers
de-massifiers, but mass numbers are themselves massifiers.

>I would like to encourage precision (in the use of masses/individuals)
>by requiring an explicit unmassifier (or fractional quantifier)

Aren't quantifiers very explicit? What more explicit than that can
you get?

>I see this as a similar kind of argument to the sumti raising question.
>We realised that we were fudging an issue (in my terms, the feature
>+/-kamsucta), and actually changed the language to allow precision, and
>starting teaching people to use that precision.

Perhaps we should start another thread about this. Can you explain
what criterion was used to determine which places were passible
of sumti raising and which weren't? For example:

(1)            le vi ladru cu banzu le nu zmadu lo titnanba
                 This milk is enough to make a cake.

(2)            le nu pilno le vi ladru cu banzu le nu zmadu lo titnanba
                 Using this milk is enough to make a cake.

(3)            mi djica le vi ladru le nu zmadu lo titnanba
                 I want this milk to make a cake.

(4)            mi djica le nu pilno le vi ladru kei le nu zmadu lo titnanba
                 I want to use this milk to make a cake.

If I understand the gi'uste, (3) is sumti raising and (4) is the correct
way of saying it, but (1) is acceptable and I suppose so is (2), so
there is no sumti raising there. Is that right? Is there any reason why
that is so? And there are at least tens of such dubious cases.

>I claim to have found a similar imprecision in the use of another of
>Lojban's unique features, and have proposed (without changing the
>language) a way of being precise. Your solution introduces an *implicit*
>conversion which allows unwary speakers to fudge the issue again. It is
>implicit because (I think) it will in general be necessary to evaluate
>the quantifier in order to determine whether it is converting or not
>(and what if the quantifier evaluates to .99999?).

I don't think there can be any doubt about it. Individuating quantifiers
are all the PAs that make sense as quantifiers except those that start
with {pi} and eventually those with {fi'u} or {ce'i}. The PAs that don't
make sense as quantifiers are those containing ka'o, pai, pi'e, te'o
and maybe tu'o, although probably {tu'o} could be given some
interesting use. But the two classes are very distinct.

.99999 is obviously a mass quantifier.

>You say it is more useful to interpret it your way - I disagree. It
>would be more useful only in the sense that allowing 'mi gleki lemi
>bersa' would be more useful: finding a way to assign a meaning to an
>inherently imprecise construction simply to allow speakers the luxury of
>not having to think about how they are using the language.

I don't think I'm advocating lack of precision here. Could you give
an example where there could be any doubt? The only things I can
think of are things such as Lojbab proposed like {mu lei re prenu}
meaning "five couples", but I think that is stretching even more
the logic of masses.

>But then I have never approved of omitting 'lo' in 'ci prenu' .u'i

I didn't like it the first time I saw it either. I thought {ci prenu} should
have been a selbri meaning "x1 are the three people", the same
way numbers work as inner quantifiers.

co'o mi'e xorxes