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

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

Another terminological morass.  "Set" has almost always in Logjam meant 
Cantorian sets, the familiar ones from set theory.  It is possible to xorlo with 
these, but the complications are many.  First of all, sets in this sense may 
have no members, whereas 'lo broda' requires at least one broda to refer to.  
Secondly, sets regularly have as members all the things of that sort that there 
are (in the current domain of discourse) whereas 'lo broda' can refer to as few 
as one of these or all or anywhere in between.  Finally, the best way to deal 
with xorlo in terms of regular sets ends up having 'lo' working just like xorlo 
after all is said and done.  So, sets are just not generally of any practical 
use in Logjam; they do nothing that can't be handled better by xorlo.  I would 
be tempted to get rid of set talk altogether, as it muddles things up.
"Mass" has been used for at least half-a-dozen (probably more than a dozen -- 
it's hard to say since many were so amorphous) different notions and used to 
solve a variety of problems.  With xorlo most of these problems can be dealt 
with directly and matter-of-factly (some are still too incomprehensible to know 
what to do, though some useful stabs have been made).  In this case, I would 
definitely do away with the word (and its Lojban equivalent), and thus save a 
lot of discussion space.  The descriptor involved is useful, though, rounding 
out the set of distributive--neutral--collective,  As for the conjunctions, that 
is a tricky question: if you join two descriptions with the "mass" connective, 
are you thereby forcing the collective interpretation on both?  Sticking with 
the neutral seems best, unless you are sure what you want to do.
I confess to adding somewhat to this confusion, becase I often have a block 
against talking directly about multipicities.  So, as in English, I talk about 
bunches, or groups or crowds, etc.  On the one side, this is just a figure of 
speech to be ignored.  On the other, it can be taken as interposing another 
entity between the things and our reference to them.  That this entity is a 
Lesniewskian set and that the logic of such sets is exactly that of things 
directly (except for the intervening set-like notation) doesn't prevent some 
people from thinking that that these intervening entities are sets and thus 
Cantorian and so reintroducing all the problems (another reason never to use the 
word set outside mathematics),  





----- Original Message ----
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, July 16, 2011 5:57:21 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] girzu gi'i gunma gi'i se gunma

2011/7/15 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 5:45 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, I agree. And that loosening is what I assumed might have been the
>> case with your not having chosen "ce" in your revised translation. But
>> what about the older version, which presumably was more guided by the
>> pre-xorlo sumti-type-splitting grammar? Was that too your choice?
>
> I abandoned sets years before xorlo, yes. I don't think sets do things
> "mutually". just as they don't use things, and they don't rest their
> elbows. So for me "simxu" means "x1 do x2 to one another", and not "x1
> has members that do x2 to one another". I don't think the two meanings
> are really very compatible, although in general it is obvious which
> one someone is using.

I agree that sets don't do things mutually. But members can, right?
According to the current definition, what do x2 are members of x1, not
x1 itself. So, the definition itself seems to me compatible with your
(and my) understanding of sets.

It's a winding one, however:

  ko'a ce ko'e simxu lo nu broda
  = ge ko'a ko'e soi vo'a vo'e broda gi ko'a .e ko'e cmima da poi me
ko'a ce ko'e
  (ko'a and ko'e mutually do broda, and they are members of the set
"ko'a ce ko'e".)

We don't need to state that each simxu1 entity belongs to the same
set. That's somewhat like saying "pa lu'a lo'i gerku cu cadzu" (one
member of the set "dog" walks) instead of "lo gerku cu cadzu" (a dog
walks). "ce" or "lo'i", or the notion thereof, shouldn't be a
mandatory part of simxu1, in my opinion.

So, yes, "x1 do x2 to one another", stripped of the notion of set,
sounds good to me.


>> Should at all "joi" and "jo'u" be distinguished according to the mixed
>> / unmixed dichotomy prescribed by the dictionary, one example that
>> would illustrate the difference for me is this pair:
>>
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_egg
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omelette
>>
>> Fried eggs are "whites jo'u yolks", while omelettes are "whites joi
>> yolks", according to their relative easiness and difficulty of
>> separating the two cooked components.
>
> If you are thinking of "ko'a jo'u ko'e" or "ko'a joi ko'e" counting as
> one thing, rather than as two things (assuming ko'a is one thing and
> ko'e is another one thing), then I don't agree. If you are thinking of
> a possible distinction between "lo broda jo'u brode" and "lo broda joi
> brode", then maybe.
>
> When you say "whites and yolks", I'm not sure if you are thinking
> "ko'a jo'u/joi ko'e" or "lo broda jo'u/joi brode".
>
>> I opine: Just like we need a generic gadri, we need a generic
>> non-logical connective. "ju'e", the vague connective, is an immediate
>> candidate. But, from our experience with xorlo, we could as well think
>> of expanding the role of "joi" that's one-syllable shorter than
>> "ju'e". ("ce" might as well maintain its original role due to its
>> logical & mathematical significances.)
>
> For me, the gadri equivalent of "lo" is "jo'u". It would be nice that
> it were "joi", if we could extract from it its harmful association
> with the word "mass", but that's a very hard battle.
>
>> I had "loi" in mind. If "da poi me mi joi do" meant "that which is a
>> mass thing composed of mi and do", could that be represented as "loi
>> me mi joi do"?
>
> I don't have a use for mass things, at least not ones created by "joi"
> and "loi" rather than by proper new entity creators like "lo gunma
> be". For me "loi" and "joi" only say that the many referents of the
> resulting sumti (not the *one* referent of the resulting sumti) are
> not to be taken distributively but they are to be taken together.
>
> But different people have different ideas about what "loi" and "joi"
> do. Some people think they refer to things called masses, such that
> you can count each mass separately and independently of its members.

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?

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?


mu'o mi'e tijlan

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