On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 5:04 PM, John E Clifford
<kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
Btw, what happened to
lo'e and
le'e ? They are not mentioned in the pages about xorlo. Were they scrapped?
Anyway, since nobody gave a complete answer about xorlo, I'll take a shot at guessing how it should work.
Hey, we did the best we could. What problems remain. (Looking below, I see you haven't yet really taken account of what we said.)
Lets start with lo . The syntax is
[optional outer quantifier] lo [optional inner quantifier] broda
lo broda means "at least one mass of broda
". For example, lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "at least one group of men carries the piano(s)". The size of the mass is unknown, in particular it can consist of a single object in which case it is in fact an individual. Also, for continuous things like mudri or rokci the size might be meaningless i.e. not representable
as a natural number
I think the word "mass" is a bad choice here, as it brings to mind things like water, which can, indeed, be handled by this technique but are better treated in other ways. And the "at least one" doesn't work either, lo is just like le except for being veridical, so "the group of actual brodas I have in mind" is better (except that "group" has a mathematical sound inappropriate here (I use "bunch" and even that bugs xorxes, who wants no hint of an entity between the brodas and their _expression_, so just "(Some)
brodas").
Entity or not, that's a philosophical question of little relevance, from my point of view. The important things is understanding how to use this thing. And since we need a name for it might as well be "bunch" (it might be "green tomato" as far as I'm concerned). So, do I understand correctly that xorlo splits the old notion of "mass" into two notions: "mass" and "bunch". "Mass" applies to continuous (uncountable) things whereas "bunch" applies to discrete (countable) things. Also lo is as specific as le but veridicial? How is it possible, then, to refer to unspecific objects? Suppose I want to say "there exists a broda such that..." or "all broda have the property..."
Summing up, lo broda is "the bunch of broda" ?
lo n broda where n is a quantifier means "at least one mass of broda out of a mass of n broda". Supposedly, the later mass of n broda is not just a random collection of broda but a group unified by something. For example,
lo mu nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "at least one group of men out of a group of 5 men carries the piano(s)". The size of the mass is still unknown, but it can be at most n
No, the group (bunch) has 5 members (x: "Five men" that I have in mind and who will be considered together in what follows)
So lo n broda is "the bunch of n broda"? In particular lo ro broda is all of the broda in the universe? I suppose that answers my previous question?
m lo broda where m is a quantifier means "m individual broda". For example, su'o ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 men carry the piano(s) (individually), and possibly some other individual men and/or groups of men do this as well". On the other hand ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 men carry the piano(s) (individually) and no other man or group of men does this".
Note, importantly, that the three (or at least three) men are from a bunch which will be treated together, not just any old men. Also, fractional quantification makes some sense here, again as pulling out a number of brodas, the number being specified as a fraction of the whole.This section, combined with what follows reminds me that I have forgotten how to talk about several bunches. I remember it as clever, but not the actual technique
So m lo broda is m individual broda taken from a bunch? How do I say just individual broda , without any bunch involved?
m lo n broda where n and m are quantifier means "m individual broda out of a mass of n broda". For example, ci le mu nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 men out of a
group of 5 men carry the piano(s) (individually) and no other man or group of men within that group of 5 men does this".
I'm not sure about the "and no other group within that group" but basically, this looks right. Note the joy of lo ci lo mu nanmu where we get back to "three men out of our bunch of five, acting together...."
"and no other..." has to be there since it's ci rather than su'o ci . So an additional lo transforms the individual men back into a bunch?
loi : The syntax is [optional outer quantifier] pi [optional fractional outer quantifier] loi [optional inner quantifier] broda
loi broda is the same as lo broda . loi n broda is the same as lo n broda .
I think this is definitely wrong; masses are different from bunches (although, in Lojban at least, masses can be treated as special kinds of bunches). I think we are now at the blender cases, at least for things like humans. At the very least, the "members" of loi broda are not guaranteed recoverable in their original form: a fifth of loi mu nanmu need not be a nanmu, only becomposed entirely of nanmu bits.
OK, so what's loi broda ? The bunch of masses of broda ?
m loi broda where m is a quantifier means "m masses of broda". For example, su'o ci loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 groups of men carry the piano(s), and possibly some other individual men and/or groups of men do this as well". On the other hand ci loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 groups of men carry the piano(s) and no other man or group of men does this". The size of the masses is unknown. In particular any/all of the masses can be of size 1 and thus in effect individuals. The size might be meaningless for continuous entities.
Another example is lu'i ci loi nanmu cu simxu lo nu damba which means "three groups of men fight against each other", where "each other" means between the groups, not within them.
I'm not sure I followed all this but I think it is more or less right; certainly, pulling individuals out of a mass cannot be the job of a whole-number quantifier. And I think your examples make more sense with lo.
Perhaps m loi broda means "m masses of broda taken out of the bunch of masses of broda". Again, the question is what if we don't want them to form a bunch initially...
m loi n broda where n and m are quantifier means "m masses of broda out of a mass of n broda". For example, ci loi mu no nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 groups of men which are subgroups of a group of 50 men carry the
piano(s), and possibly some other individual men and/or groups of men do this as well". On the other hand ci loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "3 groups of men carry the piano(s) and no other man or group of men within that group of 50 men does this". The size of the masses is unknown. In particular any/all of the masses can be of size 1 and thus in effect individuals. The size might be meaningless for continuous entities.
No, I think -- based on the above -- that it means m masses of n brodas, drawn from all the brodas.
Alternatively, it might be a mass of m brodas drawn from the mass of n.
Either m masses or a mass of m brodas , it cannot reasonably mean both things. However, is there such a thing like "a mass of m brodas" ? Aren't masses inherently continuous? Perhaps it's m masses of brodas drawn from the bunch of n brodas ?
Adding a fractional outer quantifier fixes the total size of the masses involved. For example ci pi vo loi mu no nanmu cu bevri le pipno means the same as above, with the added information that the 3 groups of men together consist 0.4 of the total group i.e. 50 x 0.4 = 20 men.
I don't know whether your are portioning out a mass by weight or volume or some other metrical way, but this just says you're talking about 0.4 of it.
lo'i : The syntax is [optional outer quantifier] pi [optional fractional outer quantifier] lo'i [optional inner quantifier] broda
lo'i broda means "at least one mass of sets of broda"
I think that lo'i is as specific (or is it definite?) as lo itself, i.e., this means "the set of broda I have in mind."
Why "the set" of brodas ? Shouldn' it be "the bunch of sets of brodas" ?
lo'i n broda means "at least one mass of subsets of a set of n broda"
It just says =the set has n members.
But we might have several sets...
m lo'i broda means "m sets of broda"
I just don't think so; at best it means an m-membered subset of the original set, and I am not sure it doesn't get us back to the members directly.
m lo'i n broda means "m subsets of a set of n broda"
Ditto
There got to be a way to consider several sets.
Adding a fractional outer quantifier fixes the size of union of the sets involved.
I don't see this one; I would suppose they gave the number of members (in the subset) as a fraction of the original set
Ditto
le lei le'i work in the same way except that a priori, I don't consider all broda but a specific set of things-I-call-broda. The inner quantifier specifies the size of this set.
la lai la'i work in the same way except that they refer to things named broda . The inner quantifier is merely a part of the name.
I have tried to think of all this as systematic and it well may not be.
It is also an interesting question how sumti-based descriptions (which are mentioned in the xamoi ckupau of the "reference grammar") work in xorlo.
I don't see the problem here, as witness the example above.2009/9/6 Jorge Llambías
<jjllambias@gmail.com>
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Squark Rabinovich<
top.squark@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In other words, since we're doing about 5 men and 3 women rather than 1 man
> and 1 woman, it seems that a quantifier is logically necessary, and such a
> term cannot be a "constant".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_quantification
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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