Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate and matters someone has related to it

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 20:14:22 EDT

In a message dated 9/18/2002 9:43:29 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> where {tu'a da} is a cover for {tu'o du'u 
> #ce'u co'e da}, it's going to get the implication the other way as well.
> 
> Is {tu'a da} a cover for {tu'o du'u da zo'u ce'u co'e da}? That is the
> crux, and I think we all want the answer to be Yes.
>>
I don't see that it makes much difference, unless {co'e} contains something 
with other quantifiers than particular in it. If not, then (skipping the 
fringes) {co'e da} and {da zo'u co'e da} are equivalent. If {co'e} does have 
the buried quantfiers, then they are not, but {tu'a da} will be the 
unfronted form (I think: we can't lift the prenex alone since then we don 
have something of the form {co'e da}) Why is this important?

<<
BTW, are you actually proposing locutions like {nelci tu'a lo cakla},
{nelci tu'o du'u ce'u co'e lo cakla}? To me, those don't mean the
same thing as "I like chocolate".
As the second, No -- did I mention such a form? It was probably meant to be 
{nu} rather than {du'u} (although the {du'u} form makes a sort of sense, 
too). But {nelci tu'a lo cakla} seems to me just right for "I like 
chocolate," in at least one reading of it, where the purposes for which I 
like it are hinted at but not given -- presumably eating for choclate, but 
maybe bathing or car waxing.

jordan:
<<
[ note to lionel: the default quantifier on da/de/di is su'o, which is
where the ambiguity comes from: ]
What ambiguity?

<<
This doesn't support that a broda b != b se broda a in the general
case. This merely shows that there is a different most-likely
interpretation of the quantification of the da/de/di variables based
on their order. Either of those two sentences *could* be interpreted
as the other, but le gerku cu batci mi is precisely the same as mi
se batci le gerku; both in possible meanings and in the most-likely
interpretation.
I'm as good a gricean as the next guy, but I don't see that there is any 
"most likely interpretation" here, this is a rock hard rule (and I'll put the 
{su'o}s in if it makes the case more clearly). The order of quantifier 
binding is the left to right order of the quantifier expressions (or their 
place, if they are implicit). The example using {le gerku cu batci mi} is 
not relevant, since it does not involve moving two different quantifiers 
({mi} doesn't have a quantifier, so not a different one). 

<<
Furthermore, though the word order leads to different likely interpretation
it doesn't change the possible meanings.
ro da prami de
Can mean "Everyone loves >=one other (the same) person" just as much as it
can mean "Everyone loves someone (else)". 
In fact, it can't mean either of these, though it would be true it either of 
these was. But it would also be true in many cases where these are false: if 
each person loved him/her self, for example.

<<
Your mearly cheating with su'o
to try to claim the grammar doesn't fully explain this.
Me cheat? Surely you jest. The grammar certainly does not give the above 
explanations, or -- if it does -- is more thoroughly verruckt then I 
remember.

<<
The non-ambiguous
ways to make the two claims are:

ro da poi prenu cu prami lo drata be vo'a
Everyone loves someone other than themselves.
(in practice the be vo'a would likely be elided and inferred
through a zo'e).
This does work for the "Everybody loves someone else" reading -- which is not 
"Everybody loves somebody" in any sense and certainly not {ro da prami de}.

<<
ro da poi prenu cu prami le su'o prenu
Everyone loves the one-or-more persons.
This is "Everybody loves the people I have in mind." A new line altogether, 
but still one that entails {ro da prami de} (assuming restriction to prenu). 
Different from it though.

<<
These two claims *are* the exact same if you flip the terms. (Except
the former requires changing the vo'a to a vo'e).
Nope. The second is, because the quantifiers are the same (the implicit 
quantifier on {le} is {ro} (the {su'o} is a cardinal for the whole set, not a 
quantifier).
Shifting the first one to {lo drata be vo'e cu se prami ro da poi prenu} 
means something like (it is hard to get the cross references right in 
English) "Someone different from all people is loved by every person" A dog, 
maybe, or God or Gaia. In any case, it is very different from the unswitched 
version.

<<
[ what's a rorne? ]
A horn, referred to by some conflation of the last three or four vocabulary 
shuffles in LoCCan. I meant {jirna}, but foolishly forgot to look it up.

<<
I was discussing this point with some people on IRC a while back, and
bunk I say! bunk! Of course unicorns exist: they're concepts. If
I say {mi djica lenu lo pavyseljirna cu klama ti} there's nothing wrong
with the bridi, as I really do desire that su'o lo ro pavyseljirna
come (even if ro = 0; the su'o is just the number I'm wanting).
Unicorns don't exist (on Earth anyhow). If they did, they would be animals 
etc. etc. not concepts nor pictures nor stories nor.... the fact that we 
have pictures and stories and concepts of unicorns is a large part of why we 
need intensional contexts: so we can go from saying we saw a picture of a 
unicorn to saying that there is something whose pictue we saw (This is 
official doctrine; I've been toying with some variants in which there are 
unicorns. But they still don't exist.)
{ro} can't equal 0, since {ro broda cu brode} implies {su'o broda cu brode} 
-- and in this context, {ro} must be at least as large as {su'o}, which is 
greater than 0. Your desire is nicely in an opaque context, so that nothing 
talked about there needs to exist in the real world.

<<
zo'o mi nelci le su'o su'o pavyseljirna cu zasti
.i zo'o lo no pavyseljirna cu zasti
'Tain't funny (haha -- but maybe peculiar). I assume the first {su'o} is 
{su'u}. You can like the idea (more or less) that unicorns exist, without 
unicorns existing. Indeed, you can like the event of unicorns existing, 
without unicorns existing. All abstracts exist, even if what is in them 
doesn't. 
The second sentence is grammatical but semantically ill-formed (i.e., 
nonsense). You can't get one or more things out of an empty set, but {[su'o] 
lo no pavyseljirna} claims to refer to just those things -- one or more of 
them.

<<
Additionally, certainly you can dream a unicorn klama do, as unicorns
*do* exist in dreams. With:
da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi senva ledu'u da klama mi
says "there is a unicorn such that I dreamt it came to me". Which
(assuming the speaker isn't lying) is perfectly fine. That
pavyseljirna exists as whatever it is that dreams/concepts are from
a biological standpoint, etc.
Which is why the content of dreams is carefully isolated behind some 
abstactor or other (not always clear what the best one is). And one of the 
three things you cannot do with absrtract clauses is bind terms in them with 
quantifiers outside them (the others are moving existing quantifiers from 
inside to outside and replacing one term by another on the basis of an 
identity external to the abstraction). [Again, there is a prefectly good way 
of talking where in we could do the binding bit, but that would only show 
that there are unicorns, not that they exist. And this is not the approach 
Lojban has taken.]

<<
It should be noted also, that if I had actually had a dream, since I
have the unicorn in mind already, the better sentence would be
mi senva ledu'u le pavyseljirna cu klama mi
Yeah, it is hard to know what kind of abstraction a dream is -- and, indeed, 
people's dreams seem to differ (I used to dream in text or voiceover), so 
this may be right sometimes. I favor {li'i}, but that may just be because I 
don't understand it. None of this helps unicorns to exist, though.

<<
Can tu'a/jai be used to raise sumti out of relative clauses? It seems
to me that we should be able to. For example:

{tu'a le prenu} could raise from {le gerku poi pu batci le prenu}

I'm unable to find anything in the book specifically prohibitive of
this sort of thing; but naturally nothing suggesting it is ok. What
do people think?
I suppose it could, but I don't see the point from this example anyhow. Can 
you come up with one where I can imagine someone wanting to do it? 
{tu'a} certainly and, by implication (and logic) {jai}, mark their connected 
sumti as being in an intensional context and therefore not open to certain 
normal manipulations. Sumti in relative clauses are not under these 
restrictions, so why would we want to restrict them?

&:
<<
I still haven't had time to digest those ideas, but in the meantime
I have remembered an old argument in favour of {lo'e} or
{tu'o} in these exx. It seems to me that what is essentially
going on in these exx -- and also generally with generic
reference -- is that a category is being conceptualized as
a single individual ("myopic singularization"). E.g. it is
quite easy to think of Chocolate as a single individual,
and "I like chocolate" means the same as "I like Chocolate".
Yes, that notion was around often for {loi}, as one of several ways to deal 
with masses. I'm not sure it helps here. but that is mainly because ever 
attempt to cash that idea in for some definite already intelligible notions 
and operations, never got much beyond the stage of xorxes {lo'e}. We could 
try tet again, I suppose, but I don't really think it will come to much this 
time either.

<<
So on this basis I understand your use of {lo'e} and agree
with it. The question that remains in my mind is whether
there is a difference between {lo'e broda} and {tu'o broda}.
That suggests that you understand myopic singularization, which, since it 
was, I think, one of your early contributions, is to be expected. But I 
don't recall anyone else ever getting the knack of it, and certainly most now 
on this list don't know what you are talking about. I suggest a thorough 
exposition, if you think the notion will really help here (not that I am 
inclined to think that xorxes' idea is one we need to add to Lojban).

<<
BTW, this automatically gives us a useful meaning for
{le'e} -- it would mean {(ro) le pa}.
I don't see how this is automatic nor even desirable or useful. And it 
certainly doesn't have any much connection with the cases at hand. (I infer 
from the o/e alternation and the standard meanings, that {le'e} is the 
subjective or selective version of {lo'e}. Does this mean that {lo'e} means 
{lo pa}?) 

xorxes:
<<
>Is {tu'a da} a cover for {tu'o du'u da zo'u ce'u co'e da}? That is the
>crux, and I think we all want the answer to be Yes.

We all want that as far as where the quantifier goes, I'm sure
about that.
I don't think I do, as noted above.

<<
But in general, {tu'a da} is a cover for any of:
{tu'o du'u da zo'u ce'u co'e da}
{tu'o du'u da zo'u co'e da}
{tu'o? nu da zo'u co'e da}

and possibly others. Which one it is depends on where it is used.
It's a du'u in a place that accepts {du'u}s, a nu in a place that
accepts {nu}s.
And up in the air for those that accept more than one absraction. So, it is 
not as clear as the full form -- but a lot shorter, which may be enough if 
the situation is otherwise clear (usually even a good guess at {co'e}).

<<
>BTW, are you actually proposing locutions like {nelci tu'a lo cakla},
>{nelci tu'o du'u ce'u co'e lo cakla}? To me, those don't mean the
>same thing as "I like chocolate".

I don't think he was proposing that. In this case, x2 of nelci
accepts {nu}s, not {du'u}s, so it means {nelci ?? nu co'e lo cakla}.
(I think ?? = {tu'o} or equivalently {lo'e}.)
Damn, now we have {lo'e} being equivalent to (the so far totally unexplained 
) {tu'o} -- and used with abstractors diectly to boot: the generic event of 
doing something with chocolate. Do note that these do not fit the examples 
so far (and I mean over the entire month+ of this discussion).

cowan:
on jorda
n
<<
> I say {mi djica lenu lo pavyseljirna cu klama ti} there's nothing wrong
> with the bridi, as I really do desire that su'o lo ro pavyseljirna
> come (even if ro = 0; the su'o is just the number I'm wanting).

There *is* nothing wrong, because nu-events exist even if the things inside
don't. But lo pavyseljirna cu blabi, "some unicorn is white", that's
rubbish.
No, just false, because there aren't any unicorns.