Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: "G. Dyke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 10:01:21 +0200

cu'u la djordn.

>The mei solution works because we're talking about pairs of >sumti,
>not pairs of animals.

That, in my opinion, is precisely why the solution doesn't work : we want a
sumti which says "the referents of my last pair of sumti". Either, in
context, we have pa gerku and pa mlatu in which case le remei refers to both
of them or we just have le gerku and le mlatu (of which there could be any
number), in which case le remei would refer to two sumti. We want the
referents of those two sumti, so {la'e le remei cu tatpi} works with any
{[gadri] broda cu brode [gadri] brodu}.

I can't now work out what {le remei} actually means. How would it differ
from {lei remei}? Could anyone share their views on which of these make
sense and what they mean?

le remei
le se remei
lei remei
lei se remei

It is, however likely that {lu'o le gerku .e le mlatu cu tatpi} doesn't mean
that all of them are tired. Otherwise an officer telling his superior "lei
nanmu cu tatpi" would not be telling the truth.

I think this is one place where the book is right in the wrong way. The
implicit quantifiers on lei don't work as they should. A mass, considered as
a mass, is either tired or isn't (otherwise masses are as useful as sets).
We can't have a situation where {lei nanmu cu tatpi .ije naku lei nanmu cu
tatpi} is true.

I'm going around in circles saying nothing here, so here are the main
points, which should go of into three seperate threads:

- How do we refer to the referents of the sumtis of the last sentence? (I
think some sort of prosumti should be experimented with)

- How do we use {remei} to refer to {le gerku .e le mlatu} in the context
{.i pa gerku .i pa mlatu .i le gerku cu jersi le mlatu}

- What do we do about these stupid-mass-things (pe'i la djan cowan po'o ka'e
ciksi). It makes no sense to be able to say {loi cmacu cu crinu} because I
decided that dying my own hair green wasn't enough.

Greg