Subject: a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 13:19:45 +0100

There is nary a shred of consensus about what {lo'e} and {le'e} mean.
The main proposed interpretations that have some currency are:

1. Something similar to {lo fadni be X} or {le fadni be X}.

2. The fuzzily-defined xorxesian usage seen in {nitcu lo'e tanxe},
{djica lo'e pendo}, {kalte lo'e mirli}.

3. Something equivalent to {tu'odu'u ce'u broda}.

I find none of these compelling. lo'e/le'e of types (1) and (3) are 
redundant, being mere abbreviations of other expressions. lo'e/le'e 
of type 2 is too ill-defined and its functions seems in essence 
to be to fudge away logical precision (though my attempt to provide
a defuzzed definition, below, is in fact compatible with xorxesian usage).

OTOH, Lojban's lo v. loi (and le v. lei) distinction fails to capture
the distinction (which applies to intrinsically bounded individuals,
like people, but not to intrinsic masses, like water) between (i) a
group of things taken as a whole, and (ii) a prototype-theoretic
category, which is an individual such that members of the category
are versions of that individual. From what I can gather, Loglan "lo"
was formerly (ii) (so "lo remna/prenu/nanmu" = "Man" (not "man")),
while nowadays, like Lojban, it is (i) (so "lo remna/prenu/nanmu" = 
"mankind"). [In former years I called (ii) a "myopic singularizer".]
The contrast is evidence in examples like:

(i) Mankind has (exactly) two eyes. [false]
(ii) Man has (exactly) two eyes. [true]

Lojban {re da kanla lo remna} means (i).

So how do we express 'categorial individuals', as in (ii)? -- Using
{lo'e}, I propose: {re da kanla lo'e remna}.

And what does {le'e} mean? Well, if there is a specific group of one or
more individuals, {le} refers to each member of the group individually, 
{lei} refers to them collectively, somewhat as if you ignore the boundaries 
between the individuals, while {le'e} refers to the one individual you get 
if you abstract away from the differences that individuate the different 
individuals -- in other words, it is the archetype of the group.

--And.