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Re: [lojban] "lo no"
Or, to summarize. By xorlo, 'lo broda' is always at least one broda (there are
no empty L-sets or pluralities), so 'lo no broda', while grammatical, is
strictly meaningless. 'lo broda' refers to unspecified (except contextually)
brodas from the universe of discourse, without comment about their existence
(except contextually). You can, of course, meaningfully say 'no lo gerku cu
broda' "none of the dogs are broda", where the referent of 'lo gerku' is, as
always. contextually determined; it does not, for example, preclude 'su'o gerku
cu broda' -- they just have to be different dogs. Incidentally, as part of the
non-emptiness of lo broda, the use of the expression guarantees that there are
brodas in your universe of discourse.
----- Original Message ----
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, May 13, 2011 9:52:37 AM
Subject: [lojban] "lo no"
On 12 May 2011 13:56, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> The point is that when I start a sentence "lo no gerku cu ", I can end it with
>any selbri I want,
Of course you can. Grammatically valid.
> and it will be true, because you can say anthing you want about the members of
>set that has no members in it,
You can say things about the members which a set doesn't have.
You can say things about the set having no members in it.
You cannot call no members "the members".
The empty set has no members, not the members.
> and that the only thing the sentence is truly asserting is that you have no
>members.
"have no members" isn't the only thing "lo no gerku cu broda" (a
sentence) asserts. It resolves into at least three selbri:
da gerku je nomei je broda
> "lo no gerku cu blabi" makes two claims --
> 1) the dogs in my universe of discussion are white, and
> 2) there are no dogs in my universe of discussion.
> (and hence, whatever claim I am making about them in 1) is pointless).
In my view:
da gerku je nomei je blabi
Your reasoning doesn't hold water. If there are no dogs in your
universe of discussion, how can you at all make a claim that some dogs
in your universe of discussion are white? If you can't, why call it a
claim? (2) contradicts (1); the inner "no" contradicts "lo".
> I am not making any claim that there are white dogs anywhere in the universe
> anymore than saying "I will give you all the fire-breathing
> unicorn-elves in my pocket" makes a claim about the existence of
> fire-breathing unicorn-elves anywhere in the universe.
You began your example with "lo ci gerku cu blabi". It says what it
says: the three dogs in the universe of discourse are white. And I'm
not mistaking the "universe" for the physical factual one.
> Just like "lo pa gerku cu xekri" does not mean "one of the dogs is
> black", but rather "the one dog is black", "lo no gerku cu xekri" means that
> "the zero dogs are black".
Sure, "lo no gerku cu xekri" may be translated as "the zero dogs are
black", just like "lo gerku na gerku" can be read as "Dogs are not
dogs".
> just like we can say "ro lo ci gerku cu blabi"
> we can say "ro lo no gerku cu blabi".
> And if we can say that, we can say "lo no gerku cu blabi"
We can say "lo gerku na gerku" as well. My concern is whether the
expression is logical or not.
>> lo no gerku ... = [ da poi gerku je nomei ] or more precisely [ da poi
>> gerku poi nomei ] ...
>>
>> Reason 1: You aren't making reference to the white non-black dogs by
>> which the truth of "none of them are black" can be inferred.
>
>
> That's true, because they are black, and white, and purple. They are also
> equally non-black, non-white and non-purple. Because they don't exist.
Not equally. You can't say of nothing that it is black, white, purple,
etc. as much as non-black, non-white, non-purple, etc. Even though
something (colors) can define nothing (no colors) and vice versa,
nothing comprises nothing. You can't say nothing (no colors) are
something (colors). (Not to be confused with the fact that there are
one *category* as well as *representations* of nothing, each of which
is something.)
>> Reason 2: You can't sensibly mean to refer to something which is-dog
>> which is-none.
>
> But why not?
Because "is-dog" predicates something, and "is-none" nothing. Were the
zero-cardinality to refer to something, we wouldn't have been able to
describe a room with no dogs by quantifying "gerku" with "no", since
it would always refer to at least one dog.
> Will you grant me that "ro lo gerku cu blabi" makes sense for any amount of
>white dogs that we are discussing?
Not "any amount of white dogs that we are discussing",
but "all white dogs that we are discussing".
I get your point, though.
> Why should that be any less sensical if the amount of dogs in the room is
zero?
> (Just like I can say to my kids "I'll give you all the dollars in my pocket"
>even if that number is zero?)
"ro" is an inexact number. I do not think it can't at all represent zero.
That's irrelevant to my point, because the outer PA and the inner PA
represent different sorts of quantity in different ways. That "ro" can
represent zero as an outer PA doesn't mean it can as an inner PA too.
Consider: Does this PA have the same utility in "lo ro gerku" as in
"ro lo gerku"? The inner works differently from the outer. I already
made this distinction when I deconstructed the example sumti:
PA lo gerku --> PA da poi gerku
lo PA gerku --> da poi gerku je PAmei
mu'o mi'e .tijlan.
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