Re: [lojban] Masses

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

OK.  I suppose someone could find a reason to quibble with this, but I don't 
really see it myself.  Though I admit I would be more comfortable with "were the 
boys".



----- Original Message ----
From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 12:38:58 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Masses

Fine yes, as long as the equivalence (in Lojban, with lo) of "The boy(s) moved 
the piano" and "The mover(s) of the piano were boys"  is accepted.

John E Clifford, On 17/05/2011 16:37:
> Yes, we don't have to say exactly what a broda is (any brodacea of the genus
> brobroda, ...) but I still think it has to insist that the referent of {lo
> broda} be broda.  This allows for some disagreement about just what counts, 
>but,
> for each side, the answer excludes certain [whatever]s from being lo broda.
> "The boys moved the piano" can be pretty indefinite about how that was done, 
>who
> hefted what, and so on, maybe even including some who didn't lift a finger, 
but
> the boys had better be boys in some fairly clear sense (which may include 
girls
> and adults, of course, depending).
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>
> To: lojban@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 10:13:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [lojban] Masses
>
> Yes, there is this question that you raise, which might be answered by
> philosophers of mereology or by the wisdom of lojban-speaking crowds. But the
> specification of Lojban shouldn't rely on the question having been answered. 
To
> give another example, the Lojban specification points from {gerku} to the
> encyclopedia entry for dogs, but Lojban doesn't have to be responsible for
> stating the content of that encyolopedia entry (which is rather a job for
> zoologists, or folk crowds).
>
> --And.
>
> John E Clifford, On 17/05/2011 15:58:
>> Hmmm!  This seems to be part and parcel of the issue of who all gets the
> credit
>> or blame.  To take the team example again, when the team wins (or loses), 
does
>> that include the manager, the bat boy, the groundskeeper, etc.?  Since
> managers
>> regularly get credit or blame, they seem to be part of the teams, yet there 
is
>> an obvious sense in which they are not (usually).  xorxes wants armies to be
>> more than soldiers, to include in materiel, soldiers' tools  -- are these
>> different meanings of "army" or different restrictions on what to count in
> when
>> making a particular claim?  And does it make a difference?  I think (on first
>> or
>> early second thought) that it does: there has to be some limit on what {lo
>> broda} allows in, else we can have lo broda consisting of many things that 
are
>> not broda and only one that is.  This seems to make it essentially le broda
> and
>> deny veridicality, the distinguishing mark of {lo} constructions.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>
>> To: lojban@googlegroups.com
>> Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 8:27:13 AM
>> Subject: Re: [lojban] Masses
>>
>> Jorge Llambías, On 15/05/2011 22:00:
>>> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 5:33 PM, John E Clifford<kali9putra@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     Since the distributive sense can always be expressed by the use
>>>> of external quantifiers, there was no need for a special form for that. So
>> the
>>>> unquantified form could be used for the collective sense.  However, it was
>>>> thought (and practice shows this was a correct thought), that there was 
also
>>>> needed a neutral expression, unmarked for either collective or 
distributive.
>>>
>>> Also, if "collective" means "all together" and "distributive" means
>>> "one by one" or "individually", there are a lot of other options in
>>> between: in pairs, in threes, some in pairs and some individually, and
>>> so on. "All together" and "one by one" are just the two extremes. If
>>> we only have forms for the extremes we are left with no form for all
>>> the intermediate cases, and if we do have a form that doesn't
>>> distinguish between all the intermediate possibilities there is no
>>> reason to exclude one of the extremes from that neutral form.
>>
>> This is a good point, but if you agree that "the team" is subject to same
> range
>> of interpretations on the collective--distributive scale as "the team 
members"
>> is (e.g. "the team each have red hair"), then I think the appropriate
>> conclusion
>> is (a) that when an individual is construed as a collectivity it may receive
>> wholly or partly distributive readings (quantifying over members or subsets 
of
>> the collectivity), and (b) individual-construable-as-collectivity is the
>> default
>> (most underspecified) interpretation.
>>
>> To try to state essentially the same point in a completely different way: 
just
>> as brodeing holds of the referentage of "lo broda" to any degree on the
>> coll--dist scale, so does "brodaing". On the plural reference model, "lo
> broda"
>> has many referents, and it needn't be the case that each is brode; my point 
it
>> that it also needn't be the case that each is broda.
>>
>> I'm not sure if you already agree with this point.
>>
>> --And.
>>
>

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