Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 14:43:28 EDT

In a message dated 7/4/2002 12:43:29 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> >On {remei} as a solution, note also that {remei} refers to a mass and thus
> >would be true if only one of the pair had the property in question. The
> >result wanted would require something like {piro le remei cu tatpi}.
> 
> I disagree with both statements.
> 
> Starting with the second, {le remei} and {piro le remei}
> refer to the same thing: the pair as a whole. To claim something
> for each member we can use {ro lu'a le remei}. The Book says
> that the default for {lei} is {pisu'o} instead of {piro} (which
> would be the correct default) but this does not apply in this
> case since the gadri we're using is {le}. {le remei} is the
> pair, not some part of the pair.
> 

As you know, even when I agree with your criticisms of it (as I do pretty 
much here), I am obligated to work by the baseline. Hence the implicit 
quantifier on masses is {pisu'o}. Now, to be sure, the implicit external 
quantifier on {le} is {ro}, so we are referring to all the dyadic masses I 
have in mind, but that is presumably just the one composed of the dog(s) and 
the cat(s). But that does NOT mean we are referring to the WHOLE of that 
mass. Absent some specific indication, we are dealing {pisu'o}ness. I am 
not perfectly sure that {piro} gets what I want (or, rather, avoids the 
one-tired-dog-case), but without it, the problem clearly remains.

<As for the first claim, it is based on the wrong idea that
properties of the members are automatically properties of the
mass. This is clearly not so for many properties, and I don't
see why one member being tired should make the pair tired.>

Nope, it is based on the complex idea that the properties of a mass are 
related in a variety of reasonably precise ways to properties of members of 
the massed set. We know that weight or yogurt-eating are simply additive, 
that (for team masses) winning is a causative resultant of the actions of 
individuals, and so on. But even in saying this we are often thinking of the 
mass as the whole of the mass, when -- barring explicit signs otherwise (or 
our winning this change) -- only some indefinit4e part of the mass is 
directly involved. Now, clearly if one dog in the mass of critters is tired, 
the some part of that mass is tired and so, in Lojban, the mass is tired: {le 
remei cu tatpi}. It may be unreasonable, but it is by the Book.

I like your reading of {mei} in the second letter, too.