Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 7:23 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> We seem to want that a simple sumti, like {lo broda} or {ko'a}, should have
> interpretation a Whole, which I'll denote [lo broda] resp. [ko'a].

If we talk in terms of plural reference, then there need be no Wholes.
Presumably both metalanguages are reducible to one another, but I'm
not sure if the reduction is always trivial. I think
Whole-metalanguage goes with purely singular reference, and plural
reference should not be mixed with Whole-metalanguage.

At least part of the reason we often don't seem to get very far with
these discussions is that everybody uses their own choice of
metalanguage and the confusion created by the mix often clouds any
points of contention.

If we use Wholes, then (at least in my understanding of Lojban) "ro"
is not the universal quantifier over Wholes. I suggest using "ro'oi"
for the universal quantifier in that case, which corresponds to the
plural universal quantifier in terms of plural reference.

"ro" quantifies over atoms in Whole-metalanguage, and it is the
singular universal quantifier in terms of plural reference.

This is what causes the weird mix we have of plural reference and
singular quantification, (or alternatively reference to Wholes with
quantification over atoms) but no other option seems to do what we
most often want to do.

> Then you'd have that {re ko'a broda} means that in the set of wholes
>    { X partof [ko'a] | broda(X) } ,
> there are precisely two minimal elements?
>
> That seems reasonable; but it doesn't explain {ro ko'a broda}.
>
> How, without invoking absolute atoms, can you give a meaning to
> {ro ko'a broda} based only on the Whole [ko'a] and on the meaning of
> {broda}?

I agree that we end up invoking atoms, but maybe we mean different
things by "absolute atoms". In some (many) contexts the atoms will be
people, in other contexts they may be human scale "dacti", and so on.
And these atoms can change from sentence to sentence, and perhaps even
from reference to reference in the same sentence. What we probably
don't need is context independent absolute atoms. Once we have settled
on an interpretation, then we do have absolute atoms for that
interpretation, but there's no guarantee that the next sentence won't
bring up the need to reassess what the "absolute" atoms are.

> If broda is brodi-distributive (and brodi is considered somehow
> canonical in this respect), you could have {ro ko'a broda} mean that
> all brodi-atoms below [ko'a] satisfy broda. But what then about highly
> non-distributive predicates like S(X) := {X sruri ko'e}? In general,
> we can't expect to have anything better than S being S-distributive.
> So following the same rule, {ro ko'a sruri ko'e} would mean that every
> S-atom below ko'a satisfies S, which is an uninformative tautology.
>
> I also don't see how to formalise your atomising poi.

I think my "poi brodi" can only be suggestive: by introducing a
predicate with a strong affinity for certain type of atoms (like
"prenu"), you help the listener pick the right interpretation. But I
think you can't ever force the listener into an interpretation, you
can only guide them there. If "prenu" has an interpretation where it
is non-distributive over certain atoms, adding "poi prenu" does not
exclude the possibility that the reference is to those atoms (or to
Wholes that have those atoms as its parts).

"lo sruri be lo dinju", without other contextual clues, could refer to
people, rocks, sidewalks, air, groups of people, who knows what else.
"lo sruri be lo dinju be'o poi prenu" could be people or groups of
people, but it's much more likely just people because if the atoms
were meant to be groups of people you could have said more clearly "lo
sruri be lo dinju be'o poi gunma be lo prenu".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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