* Thursday, 2011-09-08 at 23:42 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Thursday, 2011-09-08 at 19:48 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> 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.
> >
> > Agreed, as a general principle - though a binary ambiguity between
> > different logical forms is taking it too far, imho.
>
> The logical forms are completely unambiguous. The ambiguity is in the
> determination of the domain of discourse, which is part of the
> interpretation. You just can't fix the domain of discourse from within
> the discourse.
Yes. But the result is that if the listener thinks a certain domain of
discourse is plausible and that an E-A claim is being made there, they
must also consider that a different domain of discourse was intended
with the result that an A-E claim is being made for the first domain of
discourse. So there's effective ambiguity of logical form.
> > But how would you disambiguate to precisely say "someone loves
> > everyone"?
>
> "su'o prenu cu prami ro prenu", for example. The fact that quantifying
> over singletons violates some conversational maxim practically
> excludes the (top level) generic interpretation in this case. (There's
> still of course other intermediate level generics, as in "some peoples
> love all peoples". If that's what the context of the conversation
> calls for, that's the interpretation you will get.
But with your zo'e, mixed interpretations are necessary, e.g. to explain
{ro prenu cu se prami zo'e noi prenu}. So I think this is no different
from the "some dogs love every human" example. Do you think you can use
{su'o gerku} there, despite the "chihuauas" and "German shephards"
interpretation? If so, why?
> >Or, for that matter, "some dogs love every human"?
> >
> > (You've just indicated that {su'o gerku cu prami ro remna} won't do,
> > since it could be intended to be witnessed by the generic 'dogs' (or the
> > generics "chihuauas" and "German shephards", for that matter))
>
> Right, just as in English. You could be more precise: "some kind of
> dogs love every human", "some dogs love every kind of human", "some
> individual dogs love every kind of human", and so on. I'm sure each of
> those still has more than one possible interpretation too, but the
> logical form is exactly the same for all of them.
>
> >> But they do exist in natural languages! They are all over the place.
> >
> > Not as widely over the place as your zo'e-within-universal analysis
> > would require, surely?
>
> I find them all over the place, yes.
>
> >> "I love buying stuff, but then I never know where to put it."
> >>
> >> What is that if not a generic?
> >
> > How would you analyse this using generics? "Things I like to buy"?
> > "Things I buy when I buy things"? I don't see.
>
> Just "things": "I love buying things, but then I never know where to
> put them."
But the 'them' doesn't mean 'things in general', it specifically refers
to those bought in the first clause.
So...
> > We could try to copy this semantics into lojban if we could figure out
> > general rules for it... but for now I'd rather just leave such
> > boundary-crossing uses of prosumti undefined.
>
> OK, but with the generic interpretation there is nothing odd to
> explain. It has just the same logical form as "I love having bought
> this, but now I don't know where to put it."
...I don't think that's really right.
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