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Am 29.08.2012 00:52, schrieb Jacob
Errington:
On 28 August 2012 12:39, la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com>
wrote:
OK. Please everyone translate the following
sentences.
1. "I'm gonna eat three apples from that basket"
[some specific apples, namely the red one. the yellow one
and the green one but I'm too lazy to mention it]
2. "I'm gonna eat any three apples from that basket"
3. "Give me any three apples from the basket"
4. "Give me three apples from the basket" [not known
whether I need some specific apples or not]
gleki, Lojban doesn't really distinguish this. What
real information is being conveyed that is so important by
that addition of "any"?
There are n apples in the basket. You tell someone
you're going to eat three. They expect that at some time in
the future, after you've eaten them, that there will be n-3
apples. That's it. If the listener *cares* about which
apples you're planning on eating, they'll *ask*. The
distinction is unnecessary, as evidenced in selpa'i's reply,
i.e. the one you thought was a joke.
.i mi citka ci lo plise
I'm going to eat three apples.
Whether those apples are specific or not isn't really
important, and thus isn't specified.
But this doesn't say which three apples you are going to eat, and
it does so explicitly. The outer quantifier gives you unspecific
referents.
This is a lot like tense, in Lojban. Specifying tense
can become superfluous in the same way that specificity can
too.
However, I do agree, there are few ways to incorporate
specificity into determining lojban referent sets. In my
opinion, {lo} is unspecific as to specificity, which makes
it the all-purpose article. I personally dislike {le}, but I
don't think that it should disappear because it does form
the only way to really be specific. {lo} can be as specific
as {le}, but {le} should always be specific. In that sense,
{le} just represents a special case of {lo}, namely when the
referents are desired to be marked as explicitly specific.
{.i mi citka ci le plise pe lo lanka}
I'm going to eat three specific apples from the basket.
Same problem as before, the apples are not specific, because you
used an outer quantifier. This sentence would mean "I will eat
three of the apples I have in mind", which helps you very little.
{.i mi citka ci lo plise pe lo lanka}
I'm going to eat three apples, maybe particular ones,
maybe random ones, from the basket.
Again, the three apples are explicitly unspecific. Any three
apples you eat will make this true.
{.i mi citka ci lo ro da poi plise gi'e se lanka ta
I'm going to eat three unspecific apples from that
basket.
Okay.
The problem is that even though you call it "specific" in the
gloss, the listener has no idea what referents you have in mind.
"le" doesn't help you at all to convey to the listener which
apples you want. The only way to do that is to either point at
them, or describe them otherwise, for instance, you could say "lo
plise poi zunle traji" or something, which is much more specific
than "le plise pe lo lanka".
I elected to use {ci lo ro da poi broda} because simple
{.i ci da poi plise gi'e se lanka ta zo'u mi citka da} says
that there are exactly three things in the universe that are
apples and are in the basket, and that I'm going to eat all
three of them.
It says there are three things that are apples and are in the
basket that you will eat, which is true with or without prenex.
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i
--
pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo
^:i \jl /flr sen |ziu \su xn go kror
^:i \sym tfn /zu viw \xn jy ^jaiw
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