Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: "G. Dyke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 09:39:08 +0200

This an issue that (although solvable) I feel might be a likely candidate
for an experimental cmavo (compared with other experimental cmavo which
definately don't _need_ to exist.

For that apples and oranges case a few weeks ago: I've had wanted to say
something of the type:

le ni [apples] (kei) le ni [oranges] (kei) [both of which] no'u su'o pa cu
sumji li 12

we need a cmavo which will group sumti together in much le same way as vu'o
groups logically connected sumti together.

we could then have:

le gerku le mlatu xu'o goi ko'a cu jersi...

damn! that would break the grammar completely. Or maybe a pro-sumti which
refers to

le go'i .e le se go'i .e le te go'i etc.

Greg

----- Original Message -----
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 11:29 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

> 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.
>