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

From: EWC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 14:49:41 -0700

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002 16:30:43, "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>I can't be sure about what the place structure of {selbri} is.
>Certainly if it's about texts, it would not be the way to talk
>about relationships.

Well, what would you say about relations that isn't covered by mo,
mokau, bu'a, or the various NU?

Ah, I see that the Book says that a selbri is a ka-abstraction. It
looks like "relation x2 (abstraction)" didn't make it into the gi'uste
for bridi. The x3 of bridi might not be text then either.

So bridi and sumti are text. Selbri are abstractions and terbri are the
things we're making claims about. The predicates expressed by bridi are
ledu'u. That at least gives us words for all the pieces of Lojban text
and the things those pieces refer to.

So I'll admit I could be a terbri but not a sumti unless we devise a
method of expressing bridi with human bodies. :)

>>it's just not
>>very convenient for talking about Lojban semantics in another language.

>Or about Lojban semantics in Lojban, for that matter.

Who's working on translating The Book into Lojban? ;)

>Right. So what do you make of:
>
> lu le zarci li'u cu sumti lu mi klama li'u le remei
>
>False, right? And what about:

The "function" part of the definition of sumti possibly leads to
selsumti being not a complete bridi but just brivla. In that case it
would just be {lu le zarci li'u cu sumti zo klama le remoi}, which could
be either true or false depending on what complete bridi text we're
examining. That also makes the x3 of sumti not redundant when speaking
of bridi.

But then again we talk about "sumti of the bridi" which agrees with
selsumti being a complete bridi.

> zo mi sumti lu le pendo be mi cu klama li'u
>
>Also false?

Right. "mi" isn't a sumti of the given bridi. If the selsumti is text
for a selbri, though, that might be a statement that the bridi is "le
pendo be mi cu klama mi".

[Re: le su'o mlatu]
>>You're happy to reapply {su'o} as an outer
>>quantifier but not as an inner?
>
>Right, because so called "inner quantifiers" are not quantifiers.
>They merely indicate the cardinality of the set in question, they
>don't bind anything.

Well, {le su'o mlatu} is what I describe as "at least one cat". Of all
the things I describe as "at least one cat" it's not required that they
be identical. {ro le su'o mlatu} doesn't refer to all of the thing I
ever describe as cats, just all of one set I'm describing as at least
one cat.

Of course there should be contextual clues to distinguish between
different sets, but it's not a given that all sets described as being at
least one cat are the same. {le mlatu cu catlu le mlatu}, for example,
is not necessarily the same as {le mlatu cu catlu vo'a}, or even {le
mlatu cu catlu le nei}. In the first, each of one group of cats looks
at each of another group of cats (possibly the same group). In the
second, each of a group of cats looks at itself. In the last, each of
one group of cats looks at each member of that same group, including
itself.

>The problem is that {ko'a} can only refer to one thing (if many
>things then as a mass), otherwise things get very messy.

I'll have to go look up how pro-sumti interact with quantifiers, I can
tell.

>It is
>not clear how {ko'a} can refer to "the two cats out of all in mind"
>or even to "all the cats in mind". Does it incorporate the
>quantifier? Everything breaks down if it does.

Well, if {ro le so'u mlatu} is "each of what I describe as at least one
cat", then it might be reasonable for ko'a in {ro le su'o mlatu goi
ko'a} to refer to the "what I describe as at least one cat", but I don't
know what effect that would have with quantifiers in general.

>The way I would want to interpret it, is that
>{re le mlatu goi ko'a ... ko'a} is equivalent to
>{re da voi mlatu ... da}.

Which means that the second ko'a refers necessarily to each of the
previous two cats, or the same two cats out of those described as "at
least one cat".

>And the same for {re le mlatu ku goi ko'a}.
>A second quantification would be restricted to the same set as the
>first, so {ci ko'a} will quantify from the same set of in mind cats.

And what if {re le mlatu goi ko'a ... ko'a} were instead equivalent to
{da voi mlatu zo'u re da ... ro da}? Then the second ko'a refers to
each of the "described as at least one cat", or the set in mind before
we selected two for the first claim.

>>Hmm, but then what about BY pro-sumti used without assignment? {re le
>>mlatu cu blabi. i pa my. sipna}. Is that one of the two white cats or
>>one of all the cats in mind in the first statement?

>One of all the cats in mind. The first reference to two cats
>does not define a set, unless you include the whole bridi as
>the definition, but then what if the second quantification appeared
>in the same bridi?

Ah, {re le mlatu cu klama pa my}? If {my} refers to the described as
"at least one cat", then two of the "at least one cat" goes to one of
the "at least one cat", or {da voi mlatu zo'u re da klama pa da}. If
{my} refers to the two cats, as if it were {pa lenei}, then it would be
{re da voi mlatu zo'u da klama pa da}, or one of the two cats is gone to
by both cats. It seems more useful for {my} to refer to the described
as "at least one cat".

-- 
EWC