Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 17:29:06 EDT

In a message dated 7/3/2002 4:10:29 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I'm fine with context resolving those particular issues. I don't
> think _all_ the pro-sumti approaches can be realistically unambiguous
> (long live ra and ru). "le remei" seems like the best solution
> mentioned. The unbounded ko'a approach seems semi-dangerous to me,
> as it could damage the intended unambiguity of selma'o ko'a things.
> I'd rather munge "ru" than ko'a stuff (and that seems unneccesary
> with just "le remei").
> 

Hell, they can't even be theoretically unambiguous except for a few special 
cases. The issue here is whether they can reasonably be expected to get the 
hearer to the right thing(s in this case). In this case we do not have any 
dyads mentioned so far (in the little context we have) nor do we have two 
individuals explicitly mentioned -- merely some number of dogs and some 
number of cats. Can the hearer -- will the hearer likely -- put all of this 
together to work out that the number is 1 in each case and that we are now 
speaking of the two referents together? How can we help him? Of course, 
later context may do it-- "the dog more than the cat," say, added on to the 
problem sentence:{ le gerku cu zmadu le mlatu le du'u ce'u tatpi}. But can 
we do something at the pronoun itself? I am not clear what was the matter 
with {ri e ra}, which is almost unambiguous -- as close as we are likely to 
get, anyhow -- and as short as most suggestions.