Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 9:47 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> OK. I would like to semi-formalise this understanding as follows:
>
> The interpretation of a sumti (or more accurately: a sumti-6) consists
> of a set of referents and a distributivity flag. The distributivity flag
> has three settings: Distributive, Collective, and Ambiguous. When used
> in a bridi, the bridi is respectively claimed of each referent, or of
> the referents as a gunma, or ambiguously between the two options.
> {lo broda} and {loi broda} both return Sumti6 whose referents each
> satisfy broda; the difference is just that the flag is set to Ambiguous
> in the first and Collective in the second. lu'a and lu'o reset the flag,
> but have no other effect. When quantifying (non-fractionally) over
> a sumti, the flag is ignored.
>
> Does this accurately capture the intention of xorlo?

Not really. xorlo is about "lo", it has absolutely nothing to say
about "loi" or about masses.

An ordinary sumti-6 has referents, and that's all it has. The ordinary
sumti-6 says absolutely nothing about how its referents will
distribute when used as the argument of a predicate. Ordinary sumti-6
are things like "ta", "mi'o", "lo gerku", "la djan", "li ze", "lo ka
ce'u barda", "zo bu'u", "lu mi klama lo zarci li'u", "lo'i manti", and
so on.

There is no consensus on what a sumti-6 headed by "loi" does, since
some people think it doesn't just have referents, but it also says how
its referents play in a sentence when the sumti is used as the
argument of a predicate. That to me seems like too much to ask of a
gadri, since there are so many possibilities of how they could
distribute: one by one, all together, in pairs, in twos and threes,
some individually and others in pairs, and so on. Having a special
gadri for the "all together" case seems to me like the wrong way to go
about it, but it's a popular description of "loi" (yet not the only
one).

In the particular case of sumti-6 of form "lo broda", we know of its
referents that they broda. It is probably not required that they broda
one by one, they may broda together, but this is an open question. The
point of xorlo was mainly about removing any implication of how or
whether the referents will distribute when used as an argument, not
about how they broda.

As for the meaning of the gismu "gunma", my take is that it means "x1
consists of x2" or equivalently "x2 constitute x1". x1 is a whole and
x2 are its constituents. (Note: "x2 are *the* constituents of x1", not
"x2 is/are among the constituents of x1", which is a different
predicate.)

Thus if "loi broda" does mean "lo gunma be lo broda" then "loi broda"
is an ordinary sumti-6, and its referent then does not necessarily
broda but rather the constituents of the referent are the ones that
broda. (In this case "loi broda" will typically have a single
referent, just like "lo'i broda" will typically have a single
referent.) But nothing of this is stipulated by xorlo, which is about
"lo", not about "loi" nor about the semantics of "gunma". I rather
keep that can of worms separate from "lo".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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