Subject: Re: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 02:53:43 -0500

On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 12:28:19PM -0000, Adam Raizen wrote:
> la rab.spir. cusku di'e
> 
> > I think the misuse of {da} to mean "something", without considering
> the
> > logical implications, is much more dangerous than using the wrong
> > article. I'd say about half the time someone says {da} they really
> mean
> > {zu'i}.
> 
> "zu'i" implies "da", doesn't it?

Well, as I understand it, the thing which is unique to the da-series is
that they refer to the same thing each time they are used. Hence it
seems very unnecessary to me when "da" appears and is used only once.

But now that I think of it, I suppose that wouldn't make a difference
here. Whatever pronoun it is _is_ only used once, but the concept the
sentence is trying to express maps two different instances of the
pronoun to each human.

Let's start discussing a sentence which is less likely to be false. How
do you say "Every human has a head" without meaning that it is the same
head for every human?

{ro remna cu ponse pa stedu}? It would be disturbing if this didn't
work... but what stops {pa stedu} from referring to the same head for
every person it is had by?

{pa stedu cu stedu ro remna}?
{pazu'i stedu ro remna}? (My understanding of zu'i is that this is
equivalent to the previous one.)
{[some other prosumti] stedu ro remna}?

Of course, {stedu ro remna} would work, except there's nowhere to put
the number, meaning that everyone has some number of heads. This would
be more significant in the example with eyes.

-- 
la rab.spir
noi zu'i stedu ke'a