Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Saturday, 2011-08-20 at 11:39 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 7:52 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>> > So in {lo broda ro ri brode}, {ri}
>> > would have to carry as information not only what Whole {lo
>> > broda} refers to, but also that quantification of it is to be taken
>> > with respect to broda-atoms.
>>
>> What I meant was that it is "brode", not "ri", that needs to carry
>> that information.
>
> How would that work, sorry?
>
> Having it in the sumti seems coherent, and I'm starting to think it
> might even be usable (and barely diverge from current usage and
> prescription).

(Do you want "lo broda zo'u ro ri brode"? Otherwise "ro ri" goes in
the x2 of "brode".)

I think we should be able to say "lo broda zo'u ro ri poi brodi cu
brode" where "brodi" dismembers the broda-atoms into brodi-atoms.

To be more concrete:

lo bevri be lo jubme zo'u re ri cu verba
"The carriers of table(s): two of them are children."

should not imply that two whole teams of table carriers are children,
but is more likely just saying that two people among the table
carriers are children..

This is basically saying that "lo broda" is "zo'e noi ke'a broda", and
not "zo'e noi ro ke'a broda".

>> > {re lo bevri be su'o jubme cu ci mei .i pa ra verba}
>
> Let me give in painful detail the meaning I meant to give the lojban,
> and how I derive it:
>
> The interpretation of {lo bevri be su'o jubme} has data (B,P) where B
> is the Whole of the people carrying the tables, and P is the predicate
>  P(x) :== (x carries >=1 table) ;
> the P is recorded to indicate that when the sumti is quantified, the
> quantification is over those P-atoms which are parts of B.
>
> By definition of B and P, a P-atom below B is precisely the Whole
> which carries one of the tables. So the P-atoms below B are in
> bijection with the tables.

(Not really very relevant to your point, but why a bijection? Some of
the Wholes could carry more than one table, and perhaps some of the
tables were carried more than once, and maybe some tables were not
carried at all.)

> Now {ri} also has data (B,P). So {pa ri verba} means that exactly one
> of the P-atoms below B satisfies {verba}. Since {verba} is
> x1-distributive wrt people, this claims that all of the people who are
> part of this P-atom are children - i.e. that all of the carriers of
> the corresponding table are children. There may or may not be three of
> them.

I don't like the idea of pronouns carrying more info than B. The
reason is that some Wholes are more natural than others, and having to
keep track of unnatural Wholes is... well, unnatural.

>> Right, but it is not a general property of "bevri" that it is
>> distributive in x2 with respect to tables. In some other context we
>> may need that it not fully distribute with respect to tables.
>
> Maybe so (although I can't actually think of an example).

Suppose two people carry two (smallish) tables in the same action. It
makes no more sense to say that the carrying is distributed over the
tables than to say it is distributed over the people.

>> What I was getting at is that it is not generally part of the
>> meaning of a predicate how it distributes in any of its arguments
>> with respect to other predicates, although in a lot of cases there
>> is an obvious natural choice.
>
> Well... technically it is part of the meaning, if we accept that the
> meaning of a predicate includes the information as to when it is true
> of given arguments.

Yes, but what I'm trying to say is that the same word (say "bevri")
can be used to represent (slightly) different predicates in different
contexts, the slight difference being in this case its
distributiveness type over its arguments.

>> (We could try to define predicates in such a way that how they
>> distribute with respect to other predicates is always determined,
>> but I don't think it would work from a practical usage point of
>> view.)
>
> Agreed, although hints like "usually distributive over foos" could be
> helpful when indicating meaning.

I suppose that's the kind of information that is meant to be given by
the "(mass)" comments in the gi'uste.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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