Subject: Re: [lojban] go'i: repeated referents or just sumti?

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 23:07:02

la tanatos cusku di'e

>The gimste definiton of {sumti} says that lo sumti is text, so if you're
>speaking in Lojban about sumti you have to quote words.

So it does, you're right. The place structure does not make
much sense then, because the form "le mlatu" is a sumti form
irrespective of any selbri, whereas a cat is not an argument
unless and until there is a relationship that can accept cats
as arguments.

>Similarly, lo
>bridi are also text.

Yes, the whole system seems to be pretty messy if we
take the gi'uste at its word.

>That makes {sumti} a grammatical category like
>"noun". I'm not a noun, but "I" is.
>
>.i mi na sumti .ijeku'i zo mi go'i

i zo mi sumti ma?

> >The same cats. Use {go'ira'o} to update referents.
>
>Okay. The section in the Book on ra'o and the ma'oste only mention
>updating pro-sumti/pro-bridi cmavo, not all sumti.

Well, but if "mi" keeps its referent intact when going through
"go'i", it is reasonable to expect that "le mlatu" will too.

>With the implicit inner quantifiers made explicit it doesn't seem so
>bad, though.
>
> .i le su'o mlatu cu catlu mi
> .i le su'o mlatu cu catlu le gerku
>
>As logical statements there's no requirment that the group of cats
>remains the same between statements.

I agree about the logic, though the explicit {su'o} does not make
it any more palatable to me that they be different cats.

>There are just two groups each
>consisting of at least one thing described as a cat. If you were a
>computer interpreting those statements you couldn't assume the "all of
>at least one described as cat"s were the same.

I agree, but a well programmed computer should strongly infer
that they are, in my opinion.

>I'll still happily accept that it's convention that the speaker
>shouldn't change mental "described-as" groups, changing {le mlatu} to
>meaning "all of all the things I'm described as cats in this
>discussion", but the underlying logic doesn't require it.

"all of all" does not add information, on the contrary, it loses
information, at least if you agree with me that "all" does not
have existential import.

>Pro-sumti are
>there to force repetition of referents if needed, after all.

Yes, though they have their own complications too.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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