Re: [lojban] girzu gi'i gunma gi'i se gunma

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:57 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do you think, in the ideal world, "ce, joi, jo'u, ju'e" except one
> that's to be made generic (and their gadri equivalents) could be
> discarded, i.e. having only one generic non-logical connective and one
> generic gadri?

ce - lo'i
joi - loi
jo'u - lo
ju'e - ?

"lo" can never substitute for "lo'i", and similarly "jo'u" can never
substitute for "ce". "lo broda" and "lo'i broda" refer to completely
different types of things that have practically no properties in
common. The reason I don't use sets is not that I think "lo" can stand
for "lo'i", but rather that I don't use "simxu", for example, with the
official definition. I use it with a different definition, such that
the things that simxu are the things thmeselves rather than the set of
those things. So the discarding of lo'i/ce has to do with redefining
the (relatively few) predicates that call for sets as their arguments,
it doesn't have to do with "lo" being generic.

loi/joi is a different story, first of all because there is no real
agreement about what they are in the first place. Sometimes people
talk as if they were similar to lo'i/ce in that they create new
entities with members (called "masses" instead of "sets"). Sometimes
people talk as if they refer to the members directly, but with the
additional information that, when used as the argument of a predicate,
they are not to be taken distributively. And there are also other
interpretations, such as the connection with mass nouns in English, or
with gooey stuff, and so on.

"lo" covers the non-distributive sense of "loi" (i.e. "lo" allows both
distributive and non-distributive). In that sense "lo" is more general
than "loi", assuming all "loi" does is force non-distributivity.

As for "ju'e", it was a late addition and nobody uses it, so we don't
even need to discard it, in practice it was never dealt in the first
place.

So, to answer your question, yes I would keep just lo and one connective.

> What is your prospect for the other JOI, such as "ce'o" and "fa'u"?
> How do they relate to sets? Would it be preferable to express the same
> thing by means other than connectives?

I have used "fa'u", and sometimes I have missed a corresponding gadri
for it. When I use "ce'o", I don't think of it as creating a reference
to an ordered set, but rather as indicating that the order of
connectands is relevant. But "ko'a ce'o ko'e" still refers to ko'a and
ko'e, not to something that has them as members.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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