* Sunday, 2011-11-06 at 12:56 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Saturday, 2011-11-05 at 22:28 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >
> > Another clear example:
> > "A professor talked to all the students"
> > {su'o ctuca cu tavla ro le tadni}
> > could mean only that each student was talked to by a professor -
> > formally,
>
> No, it could only mean that some professor talked to each student.
s/mean only/imply merely/
> > just because the kind Professor ctucas; or if we apply your
> > informal rule that quantification indicates that there should be
> > multiple things at the same level involved, then because it could be
> > that they were all talked to by a logic professor.
>
> Your English suggests to me a single event of talking, while your
> Lojban suggests a new event of talking for each of the students.
True, but I don't see that this helps.
> But in any case, the Lojban requires at least one ctuca to be in tavla
> relationship with each of le tadni, there is no possibility of
> a different logical structure. If the context does not make it
> sufficiently clear what exactly counts as a ctuca, or that all the
> tavla relations were in fact part of a single tavla event, then the
> speaker should try to be more clear. The problem is not in the logical
> structure.
I think we both understand the situation. There isn't a literal
ambiguity in logical structure - but there is an effective one, in the
sense I've set out.
(relatedly, the AE and EA sentences *are* semantically equivalent if we
restrict to domains which are closed under taking kinds. I know you
avoid such domains for this kind of reason, but working in such a domain
would be the obvious thing to do for someone who's heard about kinds in
lojban but not learnt your rules for handling them relatively safely. So
in practice, there may be even more confusion.)
> >> >> Consider "a beret is a type of hat". I would say "lo ranmapku cu klesi
> >> >> lo mapku".
> >> >
> >> > In reality, I'd just say {ro ranmapku cu mapku}.
> >>
> >> What about "berets and bowler hats are different types of hats"?
> >> "lo ranmapku jo'u lo bolmapku cu ficysi'u lo ka klesi lo mapku"
> >
> > Again we could avoid kinds, and just say {su'o da ranmapku .o nai
> > bolmapku}.
>
> (You need "gi'o" rather than ".o"
(oops)
> ) That says something quite different though. It doesn't even preclude
> the possibility that every ranmapku is bolmapku as long as there is
> one bolmapku that is not ranmapku.
Does ficysi'u?
> > Or we could use properties rather than kinds, and say {lo ka
> > ranmapku na du lo ka bolmapku},
>
> That doesn't say they are both kinds of mapku, although in this case
> that's kind of obvious from the lujvo. It wouldn't be obvious in the
> case of "lo xanto jo'u lo djirafa cu ficysi'u lo ka klesi lo mabru".
>
> > or copy your approach with {lo ka
> > ranmapku ku jo'u lo ka bolmapku cu ficysi'u lo ka kairni'i lo ka mapku}
> > (where ro da poi selkai ku'o ro de poi selkai zo'u go da de kairni'i gi
> > ro di ckaji da na.a de) (although {go'e fi lo ka ma kau ckaji} might
> > make more sense).
>
> And presumably it doesn't bother you that you need to be so roundabout
> to say something that seems so simple.
I prefer brevity, of course.
> > Can you give an example where we might want to go up two levels from
> > mundanes (as opposed to their stages or whatever)? I wouldn't be
> > surprised if there were such, and maybe you've given examples before,
> > but none spring to mind (other than artificial examples like "kinds of
> > kinds of garment" - unless you can think of natural cases where we'd
> > want to talk about those).
>
> Why is beret - hat - garment artificial?
But they're all on the same level, no?
> I'm not sure where you put the base level for "lo valsi". But at one
> level the first and seventeenth valsi of some book may count as one,
> at a lower level they may count as two, and at an even lower level
> they may count as thousands, depending on how many copies of the book
> were printed.
It's true that it isn't clear what a valsi is. I do believe that this
should be clarified. My take would be that a valsi is an abstract
entity, as are jufras and selskus; that {zo mupli} has a single
referent, like (qkauless) {lo ka broda}; and that what these pixels
glowing on your monitor are doing is sinxaing valsis. The valsis
themselves may sinxa concepts, and we can skip a level and say that the
pixels sinxa the concepts.
I suppose you would have the pixel-valsis sinxaing the abstract-valsis,
but also valsiing whatever it is the abstract-valsis valsi?
> >> > The "imaginaries" terminology of the other thread gives one plausible
> >> > approach to this - treating kinds as analogous (and, in a sense, dual)
> >> > to bunches. {su'o} would get neither bunches nor imaginaries, but {lo}
> >> > could get either.
> >> >
> >> > Would you reject such a solution out of hand?
> >>
> >> I think that covers most needs, but I suspect there are cases when we
> >> may want to quantify over kinds.
> >
> > Hmm. That didn't sound like a rejection!
>
> I tried to not make it sound as an out of hand rejection, which is not
> to say I find it alluring in any way. :)
Ah.
> > For quantifying over kinds: if the rule is that {lo} gets a bunch of
> > imaginaries which are all imaginaries with respect to the same
> > equivalence relation aka differentiation criterion (i.e., to import one
> > more piece of model theoretic parlance, a bunch of imaginaries from the
> > same "imaginary sort"), I see nothing wrong with using e.g.
> > {ca lo prulamnicte mi citka vo lo cidja poi do nelci}.
>
> That's starting to look like Blobularity to me. Are you trying to make
> a distinction between "vo lo cidja poi do nelci" and "vo cidja poi do
> nelci"?
Yes, precisely. {lo} can be as sloppy as you like, as long as its
sloppiness is isolated.
> > I would also want it to be possible to specify that we are fa'u are not
> > talking about imaginaries (with respect to a non-trivial equivalence
> > relation, i.e. one coarser than equality), perhaps with {lio} fa'u
> > {loi}.
>
> Equality is always the equivalence relation, at any level.
>
> > (No that wasn't a typo! The PEG morphology allows {lio} as a cmavo form,
> > right?)
>
> It does, but not everyone is happy with CiV and CuV syllables.
>
> > I'd also want to be able to specify the equivalence relation in question
> > in the former case, i.e. as per And's (iii) of the other thread. I don't
> > know how to do that... maybe with inner quantifiers?
> > {re lo fi'u vei ni'e ka skari ma kau ve'o mapku cu vi zvati} for
> > "two colours of hat are here", or
> > {so'o lo fi'u vei ni'e ka danlu ma kau ve'o cinfo ba zi morsi} for
> > "several species of lion will soon become extinct"?
>
> Interesting idea, but for it to be actually used we need something
> simpler than "fi'u vei ni'e ka (...) ma kau ve'o".
Yes.
How about e.g. {vei mo'e re se skari lo mapku}, paralleling the
english "two colours of hat" and starting to resemble mandarin
classifiers?
The explanation would have to be different, assuming we want to stay
compositional: {lo mapku} would be getting a (possibly rather large,
possibly world-crossing) bunch, then we quotient according to colour and
take two slices, the result being a remei.
I think the {fi'u} approach is conceptually better, it's just horribly
verbose.
It seems {lo fi'u vei ni'e skari ve'o mapku} is as abbreviated as it
could get, which is probably still too cumbersome.
> > With {lio broda} being (blissfully) short for {lo fi'u vei ni'e co'e ve'o
> > broda}?
>
> But how would that be different from "lo broda"?
Only because {co'e} was intended to be coarser than {du}.
> > And {lo fi'u ro cinfo} being the wholly singularised lion, i.e. Lion
> > (rather than an infinitesimal amount of lion)?
>
> I'm not sure I get this one.
Should have been {fi'u pa}, maybe, where {fi'u PA} means you split into
PA chunks.
Martin
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