Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 11:07 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm fine with "so'i li mu" being "many fives", coerced by the
> quantification.
> In English, one does get things like "my mother that bore me", "London that
> I have luved in for so many years", which don't coerce a "many
> mothers/Londons" interpretation. So restrictiveness needn't coerce plural
> interp.

I Googled "my mother that bore me", and the first (of only six) hits was:

"My mother and I–and by "my mother" I mean always one of my two
mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead–"

and that seems like the most natural use for "my mother that bore me"
to me, but some of the other hits are not so clear that the
restriction is doing actual restrictive work.

The London example sounds odd to my non-native sense without a "the"
in front, and I would want to change "that" to "where" (unless it's a
vocative?), but I don't really want to dispute that there may be
restrictive clauses that don't do any actual restriction.

> Also, I can't think how the poi/noi distinction can apply when there is no
> predicate (selbri) present either explicitly, or implicity as when a
> quantifier is applied to a sumti.

With quantification the distinction is very stark:

   ro da poi xunre cu kukte
   Everything that is red is delicious.

   ro da noi xunre cu kukte
   Everything, which is red, is delicious.

> Not that any of this matters much to the meaning of formal definitions of
> {le}, of course, since we agree that your no'oi, nonveridical noi, could be
> used.

Right, but it's an interesting side issue nonetheless.


>> http://www.amazon.com/Plural-Predication-Thomas-McKay/dp/0199278148
>> (or was rather, when the draft version was available online).
>> Not that the whole book was relevant to Lojban, but one or two
>> chapters were very illuminating.
>
> Can one get emailed a copy of the draft...?

I don't have one, I've changed computers too many times since. I don't
know if anyone else might have it.


>> "PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi"
>> is quantification over the members of the group.
>
> Yes, I see. I can't decide if the problem goes away if "loi broda" is not
> "lo gunma" but rather "zo'e noi ke'a gunma",

I'd say that "lo gunma" is just the same as "zo'e noi ke'a gunma".

> since "PA zo'e noi ke'a gunma"
> quantifies over members of zo'e.

which must be things that satisfy the x1 of gunma.

> I guess it comes down to whether "zo'e noi
> ke'a broda" necessarily means zo'e is a single broda (as required for "zo'e
> noi ke'a gunma" to work as a solution)

No, that's not required. Many things can work as a solution working
together without that making them one thing. (That's essentially
McKay's argument.) But the kind of thing that satisfy the x1 of gunma
is the kind of thing that has members, as opposed to the kind of thing
that satisfy the x2 of gunma, which are typically many things working
together.

>or whether it can mean zo'e is a
> bunch of broda (as required, I'm fairly sure, by xorlo).

zo'e can be many broda without necessarily being one anything (whether
bunch or whatever).

> Actually, those are
> both meanings one needs to be able to express. Maybe "zo'e noi pa gunma ne
> ke'a"? (The thinking in this para is low quality, so feel free to ignore
> it...)

The two meanings are easily expressible without any recourse to "loi":
"lo broda" vs. "lo gunma be lo broda".


> The actual English example "came by bus" seems to me to demand a generic
> reading (because that seems to be the effect of using _bus_ without an
> article), but if we can use, say, "I will drink wine" as an example, then
> the nongeneric reading can be specific or nonspecific, "Ex, x is wine: I
> will drink x" being the nonspecific.

Right, but I think we don't need to commit to one of the two readings,
or perspectives, to get the meaning. In the case of the bus we may be
forced to by English:

  They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
by bike, even though (?it / their bus) had to stop for gas.

It seems to me that "it" can't be used there, because grammatically
"bus" doesn't have a nongeneric perspective available, but:

  They drank wine, and I only had water, so I will drive. Not that I
wouldn't have wanted to drink (it / the wine) too, but they had
finished it before I arrived.

In this case, it seems to me, "it" seems more acceptable (what are the
native intuitions?).

But in Lojban both perspectives remain always available, giving
something that would seem weird in English like:

  They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
by bike, even though bus had to stop for gas.

So "bus" can be generic and still stop for gas in a particular occasion.


>> What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction,
>> which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way
>> that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not
>> saying anything very convincing about it at this point.
>
> OK, I understand your point, I think. Translated into my terms, it is that
> specific readings are nongeneric; so if something is viewed generically,
> then perforce it's not specific.

Mmm... I think I'm saying the opposite, that generic readings are
always specific, but because of the arbitrary perspective of
genericity, they can often be taken as nongeneric nonspecific as well.
But I have to keep insisting that I'm not certain if that's exactly
what I'm saying. :)

> "zo'e noi ke'a broda" effectively gives you the generic reading, since
> there's no quantification.

Yes, though I would want to say "it allows" the generic reading,
rather than "gives".

> "PA zo'e noi ke'a broda" quantifies over
> tokens/members of the category.

Thereby forcing a nongeneric (or less generic) reading (and
quantification is always nonspecific).

>"zo'e'e", with optional noi or no'oi, gives
> specific, and "PA zo'e'e" quantifies over tokens/members of "zo'e'e". That
> seems pretty straightforward... (Admittedly, not straightforward if the goal
> is to paraphrase gadri using fairly common nonexperimental cmavo.)

Yes, I think if we have "zo'e'e" then we have "le" figured out, and
vice versa. But putting one in terms of the other doesn't really get
to the bottom of it (at least for me).

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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