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[lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le
On 5/16/06, Seth Gordon <sethg@ropine.com> wrote:
Maxim Katcharov wrote:
> My default /is/ what you describe right here. When you don't specify a
> default inner quantifier, the listener will automatically think "all
> relevant things", just as when you leave out time tense, they'll think
> "all relevant times".
>
> You had said: "{lo ro cribe cu morsi}, and be understood as saying
> that all the bears *in this museum* are dead". If you had said {lo
> cribe cu morsi}, the effect would be the same, would it not? The
> listener would assume that you mean all bears in the museum.
In a museum, I might assume that either the museum had all live bears or
all dead bears, and so I would interpret {lo cribe cu morsi} as meaning
the latter.
You had said:
{lo ro cribe cu morsi}, and be understood as saying that all the bears
*in this museum* are dead.
and now you said:
{lo cribe cu morsi} as meaning that the museum had all dead bears
I don't see these as different.
On the other hand, if I was hiking in the woods of Lojbanistan and my
native guide said {lo cribe cu morsi}, I would *not* assume that he was
saying that *all* the bears in these woods were dead.
And if he said {lo ro cribe cu morsi} you would assume that all bears
in this forest were dead? Well, if the native guide said "the bears
are dead", and there were no bears apparent to me or him, and we were
talking about the forest, I would assume that he meant that the bears
in the forest were dead. If we were talking about a section of the
forest, then probably the bears in that section. If we were talking
about/seeing a couple of bears laying on the ground, probably about
those bears. If he said "the bears are dead" out of the blue, and with
no context (we met on the street or whatever), I'd assume that he
meant that all the bears were dead. In each of these cases, he would
be saying {L_ cribe cu morsi}.
What if he said {L_ ro cribe poi nenri [this forest]}, or {L_ ro cribe
poi nenri [this forest-section]}, or {L_ ro cribe poi [that we see]}?
The contexts would be apparent there.
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