From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Sat Oct 27 12:36:44 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 27 Oct 2001 19:36:44 -0000 Received: (qmail 3163 invoked from network); 27 Oct 2001 19:36:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 27 Oct 2001 19:36:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta06-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.46) by mta2 with SMTP; 27 Oct 2001 19:36:40 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.253.90.30]) by mta06-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20011027193638.OBEI13652.mta06-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 27 Oct 2001 20:36:38 +0100 Reply-To: To: "Lojban@Yahoogroups. Com" Subject: RE: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 20:35:51 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Xod: > On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, And Rosta wrote: > > I do want to wage war against excessive use of {le}. > > This is what I expected, and I look forward to another go-round of the > veridicality debate which will necessarily arise, not so I can argue a > position but so I can re-learn the theory. Veridicality is pretty much a side issue, which arises once you've decided that you need a +specific reference. Then you decide whether your description of the referent is to have the status of a claim or whether it is just to help the hearer identify it. If the latter, a LE series gadri is appropriate. If the former, then {ko'a (noi)} or suchlike needs to be used. > The idea of "mi claxu ro > fipybirka" is intriguing, and illustrates a place where using a logical > language actually has an impact on usage! Usually I wonder why anyone > bothers with the appelation of "logical", since most sentences translate > conceptually without alteration into English. Yet here is a case where the > simple translation "I lack every fish fin" is interesting English. English "I don't have a fish fin" would go into Lojban unchanged. The difference is that English allows implicit negation, so "lack" = "don't have", while Lojban doesn't. > Doubtless it'll be > > futile, but still it might be worthwhile. The problem is that people are > > influenced by phonology when choosing 'default' forms, and hence 'le' and > > 'lo' feel more default than lei/loi/le'e/lo'e. Yet for singleton categories, > > 'le' and 'lo' are actually the least appropriate, involving redundant > > quantification, and even lei/loi wrongly imply the relevance of a > > distributive/collective distinction. So for singleton categories, le'e/lo'e > > should be the default. At any rate, I myself will now be ditching > {tu'odu'u} and > > start using {lo'e du'u} instead. > > I think a singleton category is noted with le pa broda. "le pa broda" = "each member of a certain singleton group". It works okay, but the vacuous universal quantification is annoyingly superfluous and, worse, it requires an explicit cardinality statement. Same goes for "lo pa broda". > For the trivial case of a set containing only one member, doesn't le'e > reduce to le [pa]? The speaker would know that "le'e broda" and "le broda" would be equivalent, but the hearer wouldn't. As for "le'e" versus "le pa", besides the differences I mentioned above, "le pa" would be telling the hearer that the extramental referent is a single broda, while "le'e" would not. > What's the archetype of a singleton; what is the mean of a single event? The archetype of a singleton is the one member. --And.