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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 21:51:44 -0500

At 08:36 PM 10/27/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>John:
> > And Rosta scripsit:
> >
> > > 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)
> >
> > First of all, "intrinsic mass" is not a Loglan/Lojban concept at all.
> > Water is the mass of water droplets (or molecules), and mankind is
> > the mass of human beings. They have exactly the same status.
>
>I know that's the official line, but I think it's untrue. The definition
>of some brivla includes a specification of the individuating properties
>of a single instance of the category, while the definition of others
>does not not include such a specification, and these are the 'intrinsic
>masses'. So yes, "djacu" is not "water" but "a portion of water", but
>there is no specification of what does or does not count as, say, two
>portions of water.

The fact that the English definition is worded a particular way does not 
signify, except that English is constrained to make such 
distinctions. remna is "a portion of human" which bears the appropriate 
minimal set of properties associated with its various places "ka remna" 
(without ce'u, or with all places ce'u, I hope). But the English "is a 
portion of water" makes more sense than "is a water", just as "English "is 
a human" makes more sense than "is a portion of human".

Example, also invoking observatives. If I run across a body part, I might 
indeed use the observative "remna", even though all I have seen is a part 
of a human.

> > > (i) Mankind has (exactly) two eyes. [false]
> > > (ii) Man has (exactly) two eyes. [true]
> >
> > Hmm, in (ii) is the subject "man" or "Man"?
>
>"Man". "man" in English can't mean much besides output of what
>Jackendoff calls the 'universal grinder' -- "after the traffic accident there
>was man all over the pavement". Bare count nouns can't usually be generics:
>"Man" is a lexically-specific exception.

But in Lojban, all predicate words can be used interchangeably in that 
manner. It may be hard to translate some of them into English to show the 
parallelism, though.

> > I think this posting is absolutely unmatched in your postings on L 
> semantics
> > for its orthodoxy.
>
>O good. Note that most prevailing interpretations of lo'e (i.e. the best 
>guesses
>of people who have ventured to make a guess) are unorthodox, and
>that "le'e" does NOT mean "the stereotypical"; the mahoste is wrong.

No it isn't. I just had a different understanding of the meaning of 
stereotypical than you apparently to. To me, "stereotypical"~="archetype", 
but we use the former when we wish to note the subjectivity of what 
constitutes the archetype from vary viewpoints. As has been noted in the 
news of late, the archetype of "crusade" is something different for Muslims 
than it is for Westerners (and particularly Bush, who used the word in a 
speech). Given that "le" is speaker's in-mind, it seemed to me that the 
stereotype would be the archetype used by a speaker.

>Also, altho Woldy says "le'e is to le'i as lo'e is to lo'i", the actual
>examples are wrong: they're consistent with the meaning "the stereotypical",
>but "le'e xelso merko" should mean "the average member of a certain group of
>Greek Americans", not "the stereotypical Greek American", and "le'e skina"
>should mean not "the stereotypical movie" but "the average member of a
>certain group of films" (e.g. "le'e skina stars Lee Van Cleef", which is
>certainly false of lo'e skina, but true if le'i skina is the set of
>spaghetti westerns).

If the only movies I have ever seen are spaghetti westerns, then my in-mind 
archetype of a skina will indeed star Lee Van Cleef.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org