Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 11:53 AM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:

> You have it right except that the noi/poi distinction is not now needed (and, indeed, the semantically irrelevant -- though pragmatically important -- broda can be dropped altogether for 'lo'). I am not sure what is wrong with the internal 'su'o' for 'lo' -- pragmatic considerations or are you saying that there is no 'su'o' in the background of 'lo'?

The internal su'o is pretty harmless, it is not even a quantifier,
it's just a cardinality. But in treating "lo broda cu brode" as
"(illocutionary:) su'o da poi broda cu brode" you are saying that "lo"
has the illocutionary force of a quantifier, an outer quantifier, a
true quantifier, not the so called "inner quantifier" which is not
really a quantifier at all.

> I'm not clear about why we need two quantifiers with plural reference (I think plural quantification just follows -- or reference follows from quantification).  Plural whatever replaces singulary seamlessly -- singulary just being a (not so) special case and one that need not ever be explicitly called upon.

Well, suppose {A, B, C} is the set of my friends, and I want to say
that each of my friends owns one car. With ordinary singular "ro", I
just say:

   ro lo pendo be mi cu ponse pa karce

Which just says that:

   A owns one car.
   B owns one car.
   C owns one car.

but if "ro" is plural, then I am also saying that:

  A & B own one car.
  A & C own one car.
  B & C own one car.
  A & B & C own one car.

i.e. "any one or more of my friends own one car". A lot more cars are
now being owned. In general, the plural "ro" says too much. We could
still say just what we want by restricting:

  ro lo pendo be mi be'o poi pa mei cu ponse pa karce

so in that sense we don't "need" the singular "ro", but such
restrictions sound ugly and unnatural. In terms of usability the
singular "ro" is the one that we most often want. For su'o it is not
so clear, but having a plural "su'o" and no plural "ro" would also be
odd, so that's why I say that we would need at least two "ro" if
quantifiers were plural.

(Sorry about the empty post earlier.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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