2009/9/9 Jorge Llambías
<jjllambias@gmail.com>
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Squark Rabinovich <
top.squark@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't understand. Consider the sentence lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno The
> English translation is "a man / the man / men / the men carry the piano(s)".
> What does this sentence mean? By itself, it means nothing.
"lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno" does have meaning: it describes a
situation of carrying, where the carrier(s) are men and the carried
thing(s) are specific things the speaker has in mind and that they
describe as pianos.
Then lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno means "at least one man carries the piano(s)". This means precisely that a situation of men that carry the piano(s) exists, but we don't know how many men are there.
> With the addition
> of context, it gets a meaning. This meaning depends on the context. The
> possible meanings are
> "A man carries the piano(s)"
> "Some men carry the piano(s)"
> "Many men carry the piano(s)"
> "Most men carry the piano(s)"
> "All men carry the piano(s)"
> et cetera,
I don't think so. You seem to be saying that grammatical sentences in
English do have meaning, but grammatical sentences in Lojban don't
have meaning until we can decide which English sentence we would use
to describe the same situation.
No. "Tables fall from the sky" also has no meaning outside context since it's unclear whether that's a general property of tables or a statement about certain tables in a specific situation. The only meaning that is safe to infer without context is "at least two tables fall from the sky". In this sense "tables fall from the sky" = "at least two tables fall from the sky". The only difference is that in the former case it might be that the context implies a stronger quantifier, whereas in the second case we are being explicit about not claiming too much.
> and also variants with "the", although why would we use lo rather
> than le for these?
If you know that the piano is black, why would you say "a piano"
rather than "a black piano"?
No, since it would make the sentence longer. But le is as long as lo .
Perhaps the color is irrelevant, or
obvious, or perhaps you want to add "and so does a woman", except that
the piano the woman carries happens to be white, so if you had said "a
man carries a black piano", then adding "and so does a woman" wouldn't
work anymore.
I agree that if you want to simultaneously refer several objects out of which some are "the specific objects you have in mind" and some are generic, you have to use the generic form.
>> For "loi" there are (at least) two
>> views: (1) it merely indicates that the predicate for which the sumti
>> is an argument applies collectively to the referents of the sumti, or
>> (2) it refers to a new type of entity, a "mass". If "loi" is taken as
>> (1), then "lo" covers it, in the sense that "lo" is silent on
>> distributivity and therefore can be used in both the collective or the
>> distributive cases. If (2), (the "loi = lo gunma be lo" theory) then
>> "lo" does not cover it, since "loi" refers to a different type of
>> entity. In practice, it doesn't really matter much which view you use,
>> pick the one you like most.
>
> I don't understand the practical difference between the views.
As I said, in practice it doesn't really matter much which view you use.
I prefer (2) because it's the one that makes outer quantifiers
systematic: an outer quantifier always tells you how many out of all
the referents of the sumti satisfy the predicate. For any sumti
whatsoever. That breaks down for masses if you use view (1).
I don't get it. I thought the outer quantifier of loi is the number of masses. How can this break down?
Also, if you say "lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno", you can add "gi'e dasni
lo xunre creka". If you use "loi", you would be saying that they wear
a red shirt together, with "lo" each can be wearing his own shirt.
Suppose I say loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno .i gi'e dasni lo xunre creka Does it mean the division into groups is the same regarding carrying pianos and regarding wearing red shirts?
> Consider loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno . Does it mean that the men carry the
> piano together, as a single group? Or can it refer to several groups?
I guess it could in principle refer to several groups, although there
is no way to indicate that because the inner quantifier is already
used for the number of members of the group, not for the number of
groups.
> If the
> later, each group can consist of one individual, in which case we are back
> to individuals. Hence we get the same thing as with lo .
Yes, you are right. It sems a bit perverse to say that a single
individual does something together though. I would say "loi pa nanmu"
is legal, but perverse. "loi" needs a group of more than one for the
distinction it makes to be relevant.
But since we don't know anything about the size of the groups, there is no difference between lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno and loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno !