Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 20:02:50 EDT

In a message dated 7/4/2002 3:38:56 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Ahh, i'm using def in '94 cmavo list, which may be in error.
> 
> 

Yup.

<This is bullshit. "*le* remei" can't refer to a set no matter what x1
of remei is. le == individual, le'i == set, lei == mass.>
{le te fadni} had better refer to a set or come up with a very good reason 
why not -- and {lo te fadni} is definitely about a set. An INDIVIDUAL set 
(or several individual sets taken separately) but a set all the same. Where 
did this idea come from: it is an individual, set or mass of the appropriate 
sort, {le'i gunma} is about a set of masses and {le gunma} is about a mass. 
So, {le remei} is about a mass with two elements.

<I was talking about the sumti themselves -- that's the only way this works.
See below:>

As xorxes pointed out, {sumti} is used ambiguously in English: for both the 
linguistic expression and its referent. It is not ambiguous in Lojban (it is 
the expression) and I try to use it that way in English -- and take others as 
doing so as well, if possible. What DO you mean by "the sumti themselves"? 
Your text reads like something that fluctuates over the two English meanings 
and, when read conistently in one reading or the other, is clearly false 
(use-mention ambiguity in a peculiarly Lojbanic form).

<I was going on bad definition remei. the point was the "sumti smuni" part.
I'm talking about a pair of things refered to by sumti. The two sumti
referents mentioned were:
all of somenumber of dogs
all of somenumber of cats>

Well, unless the number is 1 in each case, this will not be a pair. "All" is 
a lousy reading in English (and a bad translation from Latin and Greek), 
"every" is better: the reference is each taken separately, not to any lumping 
(mass or set) of them -- {le} always comes down to a conjunction. There is 
no separate level of the sort you mention between the individual dogs and 
cats and their mass.

<The mei solution works because we're talking about pairs of sumti,
not pairs of animals.>
Either "sumti" means the referents, in which case we are talking about some 
number of animals, apparently two, but that not guaranteed or mentioned 
earlier, making the anaphora non-functional. Or "sumti" means the 
expressions and the claim that we are talking about them is simply false.