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[lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le
On 5/11/06, Seth Gordon <sethg@ropine.com> wrote:
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}
Indeed. This would allow one to define the context exactly, instead of
leaving it up to the listener to guess it. Right now it seems that {__
ro cribe poi [in that cage]} refers to the bears that are in
context/"are relevantly seen as bears". What if the relevant bears
that we've been talking about for the last hour are some specific 20
bears, 2 of which are in the cage? This would say "all of the (those
20 relevant) bears that are in the cage" - but it doesn't say what I
want to say - all of the bears in the cage, context aside.
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
Yes, though I'm uncertain about "imaginary bears" as a rule - how do
you express them in space? Do they have their own space? The
objections that I've given stand on their own, without having to bring
imaginary bears into this. I just include imaginary bears to stress
that I mean "aaaaaaaaaall bears".
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
Yep. Usually, you'd restrict it with poi, and use something that
expresses relativity: relative to now, relative to me, relative to
this, etc. Then it becomes drastically more useful.
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.
My suggestion is that {lo cribe cu morsi} mean exactly that (blank
inner quantifier).
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.
Yes, I agree with this. What I'm arguing for is giving the speaker the
ability to to define context (would beone way of putting it) where
context may otherwise be unclear.
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