Right. I was off in recipes, though I would probably say "the half can" in your case. Some kinda - lect thing.
Sent from my iPad "Half of a can of oranges", in English, is not half of the oranges in a full can; it is a thing, possibly a mass, comprised of both the can and half of the oranges that were in it. (If I ask you to give me the half a can of oranges that's in the fridge (perhaps to ensure you don't give me the other one that is unopened), I don't expect you to take them out of the can and give them to me.)
Consequently it is not {pi mu lo <oranges in a can>}, but possibly {pi mu lo <oranges in a can> joi <the can>}. I don't think there is any way to obtain this via purely numerical means, which makes me suspect that the syntax of "half a can of oranges" is ultimately malgli/malrarbau.
mu'o mi'e .latros. On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 4:12 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
It sounds like time for a stroll through all the various descriptors and what they might mean nowadays. I'm not going to do that because my views are probably eccentric, but it does seem useful to take care of a few things. {lo}, {le} and {la} ex[ressions all refer to things (in Lojban's generous sense), things that are (somehow) or are called or are named by what comes after. Sentences involving them say that these things (including one thing but not no thing) somehow have the property ascribed to them. Parallel to these are two other sets, one adding -i and one adding -'i, for the "mass" and the (C-)set of the things referred to by the bare forms. I assume C-sets are not a problem, except that a C-set of things can have 0
members, in which case it does no longer correspond to a bare form. "Mass" is a horrible word in Logjam history, having meant untold numbers of things over the years. At the this point, the most useful thing to be done with it is to take it as the guaranteed collective sense of {lo}, etc. Maybe someday a useful notion of mass will get specified and we will work with it, but it hasn't happened so far.
The point of "half a can of oranges" is that it means "half of the oranges in the can" (however many they are), and that is simply (assuming veridicality) {pi mu lo [oranges in a can]}, a no problematic _expression_, unlike the suggestion {lo pi mu [oranges in a can]}.
Unless you're really good at fuzziness, it is best not to draw anything from it for ordinary Lojban (which does have fuzzy numbers when needed). "This can of oranges is in the set of cans of oranges to value 0.5" doesn't halve the can nor the oranges, it at
most says this is not an absolutely perfect specimen of a can of oranges (by whatever criteria are in use) -- and making the 0.5 fuzzy doesn't help a bit.
It is probably worth noting that the discussion of i9nternal quantifiers in CLL is at least misleading. It is not the case that the internal quantifier says how many broda there are altogether, but only the number of those who are of current interest. This is clearest with {le}, which relies overtly on a selection, and hardest to see in the case of {lo'i}, but applies across the board.
The word I forgot last time around is {zo'u}
From: Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, May 20, 2011 2:16:50 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "lo no"
Well, my canned oranges are fuzzy, then! (I probably should have used them before the sell-by date. They'd've been less fuzzy).
:-D
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, except if broda is "x1 is a can of oranges", I don't think {lo se pi mu mei broda} is a fuzzy set at all. Half a can of oranges is another can of oranges with its contents cut in half, so it forms {lo se pa mei broda}. (On the other hand this may ultimately be malgli/malrarbau, which would beg the question of how to reasonably briefly express "half a can of oranges" in non-malgli/malrarbau terms.)
You're right, though, that {se te pi mu mei} does make formal sense, it just has no similarity to its natlang counterpart whatsoever. Consequently (assuming {mei} still maintains all its places) {pi mu mei} also has no similarity to its natlang counterpart whatsoever.
Good catch though.
mu'o mi'e .latros.
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
Actually, in fuzzy logic, a member can indeed be only "half in" a set. Therefore cardinalities of other-than-non-negative integers has a place in set theory. No reason why lojbaniss shouldn't be able to talk about it.
--gejyspa
On the discussion about pi PA mei: ignore x3s and consider the predicate:
se te pi mu mei
This is "x1 is a set whose 1/2 members are x2". This makes no sense; you can't have a set with cardinality 1/2. I think part of the problem here is that we've never resolved the issue of masses (here these are not technically masses, but we are considering one object and removing some of its components, leaving behind something that resembles the original object in some clear sense) with respect to set theory. (At least as far as I know, maybe this was handled at some point.) The ad hoc solution would be to remove the relation to sets from mei altogether; set {lo se mei} to be zi'o in all cases and leave it at that. The better solution would be to figure out, in a formal sense, what exactly about "a can of oranges" causes it to make sense to say "half of a can of oranges", and more importantly what makes "a half a person" make only figurative (or, I
suppose, cannibalistic, if you're into that sort of thing) sense.
This really has rather little to do with {lo no}, though.
mu'o mi'e .latros.
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