Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Sunday, 2011-09-04 at 18:22 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>
>> Pre-xorlo "lo" was just a synonym of "su'o". There's not much point in
>> having two words for the same quantifier. xorlo "lo" is not a
>> quantifier, rather what it does is create a referring expression out
>> of a predicate, and the only requirement is that the referent(s) of
>> that expression satisfy that predicate.   But what those referrents
>> are will change from context to context.
>
> Right. But it's important that the range of possible/likely referents is
> understood by the listener. If the convention is that individuals with
> a priori bizarre properties, like Kinds or lo'e-typicals or any of the
> various flavours of masses/groups/whatever, are plausible referents,
> then this convention needs to be commonly understood.

Do you think there's something bizarre about the properties of the
referrent of the noun phrase "the listener" in your first sentence? I
don't. I think that in the context of this conversation it is
perfectly clear what you mean by "the listener". The same referrent
would be a plausible referrent for "lo te cusku" if you had written
the sentence in Lojban. The same can be said about most of the noun
phrases you used in those two sentences. It's almost impossible to say
anything without resorting to some level of abstraction.

If you ask how many legs do humans have, what's the bizarre answer,
"two" or "billions"?

> Moreover, if the
> properties of these magic individuals, or the conditions under which
> they become plausible members of the domain of discourse, are not
> ill-specified, then the semantics of the language is correspondingly
> ill-specified.

I don't really see anything magic about the referrents of "the
listener" or of "humans" in the above examples. Using different levels
of abstraction in different contexts seems to me like an ordinary use
of language.

> To repeat the problem which you seemed to be getting around by invoking
> a varying domain of discourse: suppose I'm showing you my flea circus,
> consisting of 100 fleas almost all of which are black, but which
> contains a few freaks of other colours. Then the following exchange
> seems reasonable, if we don't play tricks with domain of discourse and
> treat generics just like other individuals:
>
> M: .o'a pa no no da vi cinki
> X: za'a lo vi cinki cu xekri
> M: .ua mi jifsku .i su'o pa no pa da vi cinki

X's "lo vi cinki" could be understood as a generic or it could be
understood as "lo [ci no no] vi cinki". I would go with the second,
given the context of the first sentence.

M's second sentence can only be understood as a joke. It's as if
someone says "there are three things on the table: a book, a pen and a
rubber duck" and someone else adds "No, you are wrong, you forgot to
count the book's cover, the left side of the pen and the many
thousands of dust particles that are also on the table, among many
other things". Of course once you bring those things up, they are now
in the domain of discourse and it's hard to get rid of them, but that
doesn't make the first statement "false", it just makes the second
person a nuisance. If you have counted 100 insects, then insects in
general will not count as a new insect. In fact when the 100 insects
are already part of the domain of discourse if you want to talk about
them and that kind of insects at the same time you need to say
something like "this kind of insects" where "these insects" would
suffice in other contexts.

>>  "...pu ta'e citka lo figre" vs. "... pu co'i
>> citka lo figre".
>
> Right, but using tenses like this only works for the John case - unless
> you want to redefine the tense system to apply to "stages" as well as
> times... is that really what you're doing?

I think we are using the term "stages" differently. For me an
individual like John has stages: "two-year-old John" for example is a
stage of John, who is not permanently two years old. The analogy I
mentioned was between wholistic individuals with their stages and
Kinds with their manifestations (and it's an analogy, not a perfect
correspondence in all respects). In fact Kinds can have stages too, in
a different dimension than the one where they have manifestations.
"Before 10,000 years ago, horses were widespread in North America,
Asia, and Europe. The population crash that exterminated them in North
America hit them everywhere." "Being widespread in North America" is
similarly not a permanent property of horses, it's a property of one
of its stages, and it's not a property of any of its manifestations.

In the case of manifestations, we might do better with "spatial
tenses" like "fe'e ta'e" if "ta'e" by itself can only be taken
strictly in a temporal sense. Or maybe this has something to do with
the elusive distinction between "ta'e" and "na'o".

>> Plain "citka lo figre" would probably have to remain ambiguous between
>> at least those two.
>
> Based on this and some other things in this mail, I'm taking you as
> saying that you want this to hold also when John is replaced by {lo
> gerku} read generically, though this seems not to accord with your
> answer to me question about dogs being small and hungry (a question
> I asked precisely for the purpose of probing whether you wanted this
> predicate-based ambiguity! But I guess that was unclear). Could you
> confirm that I'm now reading you right? i.e. if {lo broda} is read
> generically in {lo broda cu brode}, then the latter is ambiguous between
> saying that some "stage" of {lo broda} brodes, and saying that the
> generic itself brodes - the truth conditions for which are unclear, but
> probably have something to do with typicality.

In "lo broda cu brode", it is always lo broda which brodes. If horses
are found in N.A., it is horses that are found in N.A., even if for
this particular predicate it is also (and necessarily) the case that
some (and probably not all) of its manifestations must be found there,
just as when John is sitting on a chair, it is John who is sitting on
the chair, even if for this particular predicate it is also (and
necessarily) the case that some (and probably not all) of its stages
are sitting on the chair. What we can say about the
manifestations/stages of something when that something satisfies a
certain predicate will depend on the predicate. But it's an inferrence
we make from the original claim about the something, it is not what
the original claim was about.


>> What I'm saying is that it's (similar to) the usual semantics of the
>> English bare plural, at least as analysed by Carlson.
>
> So you read {so'e pemci cu se finti lo na'e pemfi'i} as
> MOST (x:poem(x)). EX (s:[s is a stage of {lo na'e pemfi'i}]. finti(s,x)
> ?

If I understand Carlson correctly, that's what it can be transformed
into, not what it translates into.


> So if I were to say, out of the blue, {da finti ro pemci}, what would
> you make of it? Would you think I was making the innocuous claim
> regarding generics,

It doesn't have to be completely innocuous. You could be making the
point that poems don't just appear out of thin air. But I think I
would tend to interpret it as you claiming that God, or some other
such entity, was the true creator behind all poems, maybe some claim
about inspiration.

> or that I was crazy, or that I was referring to
> a special form of poem which does indeed have only one author? Most
> importantly: how would I disambiguate to indicate that I really mean
> "someone wrote all poems"?

"su'o prenu cu finti ro pemci" would do, since using "su'o" when your
domain of quantification is a single entity would surely violate some
conversational maxims even if it can be said to be true.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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