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Re: [lojban] About plural 'ro'

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 10:16 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> OK. But consider "The students are men and women", where you don't mean to
> claim that anybody is both a man and a woman. I take that to mean "Each of
> the predicates is-a-man and is-a-woman is predicated of some subcollectivity
> of the students". Likewise, your example is "Each of {wore red caps,
> surrounded the building} is predicated of some subcollectivity of the
> students".

If all the men are on the left and all the women on the right, we could say:

   lo tadni cu (zu'a) nanmu gi'e (ri'u) ninmu
   "The students are (on the left) men and (on the right) women."

We don't need to actually say the spatial tense, and if they are all
mixed up in principle it would be the same, they are men wherever
there is a male student and women wherever there is a female student.

> So the difficulty with Lojbanizing your English example doesn't really have
> to do with problems with mixing 'collective' and 'distributive' predicates,
> and the solution is one that would also handle my example.

It may well be just to different ways of explaining the same thing. I
find plural reference intuitive, while the introduction of
intermediate collections only so that we can predicate singularly of
them less so. But if it ends up being the same, it's all well.


>  To my way of
> thinking, the ro'oi one would involve quantifying over subcollectivities of
> <sumti> and the ro one would involve quantifying over primitive
> subcollectivities of <sumti> (where primitive = a subcollectivy with no
> subcollectivity but itself).

OK. I think of plural quantification as quantification over numbers.
The plural existential quantifier is "some number of" and the plural
universal is "any number of". Maybe "number" is the least
ontologically charged noun one can use if a noun must be used.

> (When I say "to my way of thinking", I mean about the semantic
> representations, not about what Lojban locutions are supposed to mean.)

I don't think things like "plural reference" or "singular quantifier"
are necessarily an intrinsic part of the meaning of a locution, they
are just metalinguistic tools to explain the meaning. So if the two
ways of speaking in the metalanguage come to the same conclusions
about what to say when in the object language, one can use whichever
one one finds more comfortable.

>> We know (or at least don't argue much about) how sumti such as ti, ta,
>> tu, mi, do, ri, ra, ko'a, di'u, etc. get their referents, which can be
>> one or many.
>
> It's not clear to me that the referent can be many (rather than being a
> collectivity, if that is different from being many).

A pluralist wouldn't say "the referent (of a given term) is many",
they would say "the referents (of a given term) are many".

The singularist would say "the referent (of a term) has many members"
(or "many subcollectivities"?)

>> But how does a sumti like "lo broda" get its referents?
>>
>> No matter how it gets them, we know that they must satisfy the broda
>> predicate, i.e. "lo broda cu broda". Is it necessary that each of the
>> referents satisfy the predicate? No. Is it necessary that they satisfy
>> it all collectively? No. Is it necessary that they satisfy it in
>> groups of seven? No. In groups of varying numbers? No, that's not
>> necessary either. All that is required is that its referents must
>> satisfy the predicate "broda", in whatever arrangement they do it,
>> i.e. "lo broda" = "zo'e noi ke'a broda", it is a sumti whose
>> referent(s) satisfy the predicate broda.
>
> OK. But it's plain to see how if there's only one referent then this is all
> so much simpler.

Is it? How can you tell which collectivities are possible referents?
It seems to me you have to do the same work to explain, and in the end
collect all the referents into one collectivity. What's the
relationship between the referent or referents of "lo broda" and the
predicate "broda"? You say it brodas, I say they broda. Are we saying
anything different?

Instead of saying "is it necessary that each of the referents of 'lo
broda' satisfies the predicate 'broda'? No." you will say "is it
necessary that each primitive subcollectivity of the referent of 'lo
broda' satisfies the predicate? No.", and so on. I don't see it is
simpler.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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