[lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le

[Seth Gordon <sethg@ropine.com>]

I have skimmed some of this discussion, so pardon me if I missed an
important detail, but....

If I understand Maxim's argument, he wants {lo ro cribe} to refer to
every bear that exists or may exist, unbounded by any context
established by the conversation.  By this definition, {lo ro cribe}
includes not just every live bear in the real world, but the furry
characters in "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", and the stuffed bears on
display at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.  There are
probably a few occasions when it would be useful to make a statement
about such a broadly inclusive set of bears, but *damn* few.  I would
rather have the freedom to have a conversation in Lojban in the museum,
say {lo ro cribe cu morsi}, and be understood as saying that all the
bears *in this museum* are dead.

For any act of communication to take place, the speaker must make a
reasonable effort to express himself or herself clearly, *and* the
audience must make a reasonable effort to understand.  I think part of
that reasonable effort is keeping track of the context of what is being
said and interpreting the words accordingly.


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