Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> But wouldn't you agree that the domain of discourse should be mostly
> static?

I think it needs to be mostly dynamic. (Don't ask me for a full theory
of dynamic how, but I think the static assumption only works for
interpreting small chunks of language at a time.)

>So we can't solve the problem of {ci da panzi mi} by just
> declaring that such a statement indicates that the Kind {lo'e panzi mi}
> probably isn't in the domain of discourse, because it wouldn't be at all
> remarkable for {lo'e panzi mi} to be explicitly talked about in a nearby
> or even the same sentence.

With a strictly fixed domain that would be hard to do, I agree.


>> I'm not sure it's such a good idea to think of kinds as being made of
>> something.
>
> Well... they come from unary predicates (no?), and sometimes those are
> true of only one thing. e.g. {lo'e me mi}, maybe.

Unless you want to say things like "I am no longer who I was ten years
ago", or "I am not the same person when I'm on vacation". Sometimes
you can do that just with tense, or you can say it's metaphorical, but
a metaphorical interpretation is still an interpretation.


>> >> and "poets write some poems, but most poems are written by non-poets"?
>> >
>> > I don't think 'poets' is a generic there, any more than 'non-poets' is.
>>
 >> Carlson would disagree. (Or rather,I think he would say that bare
>> plurals are always the same thing, I'm not sure he would call it a
>> generic.)
>
> Hmm. I think he would call 'poets' and 'non-poets' indefinite plurals,
> and analyse them as existentially quantified
> instances/realisations/stages of the corresponding Kinds (as in section
> 4.2 of the paper you reffed).

Read again the paragraph beginning "But here I seem to be arguing the
contrary of what I have argued for at length a bit earlier [...] the
remainder of this work is devoted to the resolution of this
contradictory state of affairs." The resolution is that the
existential quantifier ends up being buried within the predicate, not
in the bare plural term. The predicate "... writes some poems" becomes
something like "/xEy[R(x,y)&writes-some-poems(y)", while "poets"
translates as "/PP(p)".

And this works because, as Carlson points out, bare plurals are never
actually ambiguous as to what reading they should be given. The
predicate normally selects for which reading is the one called for,
and when it doesn't it's because the predicate itself is ambiguous, as
can be shown with the same predicate acting on non-bare plural
arguments.

>> but for "lo broda lo brodi cu
>> brodu", just the same as for any other "ko'a ko'e broda". I just don't
>> think that "lo broda" fixes by itself any level of abstraction.
>
> So you think we should just consider it as another part of the ineffable
> and irreducible semantics of brodu?

It doesn't have to be ineffable and irreducible, but yes, I think it
makes more sense to shift the focus of the analysis there.

> Meanwhile, one last translation question: do you have a way of rendering
> "humans have two legs" in your lojban, using the Kind 'humans' but
> without using anything like the {ckaji lo ka...} trick?

I would say: "lo remna cu se tuple re da".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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