Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 01:29:21 +0000

la pycyn cusku di'e

>But, if you want to insist (as
>Jordon seems to) that {le remei} means mass of the cat and the dog, then 
>you
>are stuck with the rest of it.

No. There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.
There is no reason why the implicit {pisu'o} of {lei} has to be
transferred to {le remei}.

>That mass is tired if only the dog (or only
>the cat) is, just as the mass chases the potman if only the dog does.

That's your interpretation. The way I see it, the properties of
tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
that of the mass.

>Masses
>aren't as useless as sets, but they need to be treated carefully.

It would be very hard to do away with masses, they are very
useful. But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
widespread in Lojban lore.

>Is {ko'a joi ko'e gunma ko'a ce ko'e ce ko'i} true or
>not?

We'd have to agree first on the place structure of {gunma} for
me to answer something that is meaningful to you.

Assuming {ko'a} and {ko'e} refer to individuals, then
{ko'a joi ko'e} refers to a mass of two individuals, and
{ko'a broda} being true does not imply that {ko'a joi ko'e broda}.

>If true then your remark backs up my point about masses being only
>partial. If false then, then {loi gerku cu gunma lo'i gerku} is also 
>false,
>against a number of basic sematic principles.

I don't see how you conclude any of this. Taking {gunma} as the
relationship between a mass and a set with the same members, then
{piro loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true, and therefore
{pisu'o loi gerku cu gunma lo'i broda} should be true as well.
{piro loi broda cu brode} always entails {pisu'o loi broda cu brode},
as long as {piro loi broda} is not the empty mass!

>{gunma} means -- like most
>predicates -- "is A mass" not "The complete mass" from some set.

Assuming it does (even though that's not what the gi'uste says)
{le gunma} is still used to refer to one (or more) of those masses
from some set, not to parts of those masses from some set. Once
you identify what {le gunma} is, it is that mass, not just any part
of that mass.

>{remei}
>notice talks about the size of the set underlying, not about completeness
>either.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Hopefully {lo sovda 12mei} does
not claim that the set of all eggs has only 12 members! {lo remei}
is "a dozen", not some part of an underlying set of 12.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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