Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:42 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> The ambiguity would be widerspread than in English, of course. You can't
> say "someone loves everyone" and mean that the generic lover does, but
> you could with {da prami ro de}. And if this generic lover is invoked by
> innocuous phrases like {ro se mamta cu se prami}, it wouldn't be
> a particularly exotic reading.

I think it would be somewhat exotic but only because you would be
mixing two levels of abstraction for the same things in the same
sentence.

But "su'o da prami ro de" does have a reading that "someone loves
everyone" lacks, because Lojban doesn't distinguish someone/everyone
from something/everything. "su'o da prami ro de" could be instantiated
by "dogs love everything" (as opposed to, say, cats, that only love
themselves). Then, since dogs love everything, then something does
love everything, i.e. "su'o da prami ro de".

In general, Lojban can be more vague than English. But that's not a
bad thing, as long as we have the means to be more precise when we
want or need to.

> You may be right that it's impractical to grammatically distinguish
> between generics and mundanes (and perhaps also that there isn't
> a coherent distinction between the two), though I'm not really convinced
> yet. But even if so, introducing with zo'e these generics which
> demonstratedly *aren't* necessary, because they don't really exist in
> natural languages, seems unhealthy.

But they do exist in natural languages! They are all over the place.

mi nelci lo nu mi te vecnu zo'e goi ko'a .i ku'i ba bo mi no roi djuno
lo du'u mi punji ra makau
"I love buying stuff, but then I never know where to put it."

What is that if not a generic?

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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