Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 13:15:16 +0000

la and cusku di'e

>If, as you have been wont to say, "mi nelci lo'e cakla" etc. can
>be aptly glossed as "I am a chocolate-liker", "That is a sofa-
>resembler"/"That is sofa-like", "That is a boa-depicter", then "lo'e
>cinfo cu xabji le friko" would be "Africa is lion-inhabited", which
>seems to me not the same as "The [generic] lion lives in Africa",
>though each of the two different meanings is a challenge to
>express adequately in Lojban.

You're right! I think this points to why the best examples
of {lo'e} don't have it in x1: because in English x1 corresponds
to the subject, and the subject is something about which we
say something, and this is not what happens with {lo'e}.
(Indeed bringing {lo} to the subject position by fronting
to the prenex is the best way to show the inadequacy of {lo} in
these cases.) {lo'e mlatu cu kavbu lo'e smacu} still works for
"cats catch mice", as there is nothing being referred to in
this case, I think.

>If "tu'o du'u ce'u da cinfo" is the way to refer to the Lion
>intension, I wonder if ways can be found to express all the
>meanings using "tu'o du'u ce'u da cinfo" rather than "lo'e",
>just for the sake of clarity. Then "lo'e" could be defined
>as an abbreviation of certain more longwinded Lojban forms.

I can't do that, because I don't want to refer to the
Lion intension when talking about lions. I only refer
to the Lion intension when talking about meanings, but
that's not what we do in ordinary discourse: we use
meanings, we don't talk about them. My contention
is that {lo'e cinfo} cannot be expressed as {le broda}
or {lo broda} for any broda, just like {zi'o} cannot be
replaced by any {le broda} or {lo broda}.

>A lot of your debate with pc could be avoided if you eschewed
>the form {lo'e} and used an unassigned cmavo for your purposes
>instead.

I don't mind my debate with pc, indeed it helps me to
clarify at least to myself if not to him what I mean.
I think my use of {lo'e} has enough in common with
the gloss "the typical" (even if it's not the perfect
gloss) that I can use it. And I think it would be much
harder to get anyone else to accept a new cmavo than to
accept my usage of {lo'e}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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