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Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

Thanks for the clarification.  But I think some of the points you leave up in the are, in fact decided by usage and could only be changed with considerable disruption.

That the elements of lo broda may broda collectively and not distributively seems to me to be settled by something (in fact by) lo sruri be lo dinju.  The answer is affirmative.

To put another up in the air case up even further, saying that some brodas brode collectively doesn't exclude that the collections are less than the whole, I.e. that of abcd. ab do it collectively and likewise cd, or any other combination other than each doing it singly (and maybe even that)

"constituents" is a dicey word.  I suppose you mean "atomic parts for the present purpose", because, if it means something else, we will have all sorts of problems with just what a quantifier on a gunma quantifies over (given the indeterminate nature of any components other than the atoms).

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 13, 2011, at 14:02, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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