Subject: [lojban] [[email-masked]: Re: lo'edu'u]

From: Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 19:11:36 -0600

Robin asked me to send this to the main list, because he doesn't
want to read jboske, and wanted to know why I don't like lo'edu'u
(as a seperate thing from nicks complaints about misuse of "lenu",
which I agree is rampant).

----- Forwarded message from Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]> -----

From: Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: lo'edu'u

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 11:23:47PM +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> Lojbanists, walking home tonight, I had an epiphany.
> 
> And is right on lo'edu'u. And I'm going to make this part of _Lojban 
> for Intermediates_ one day.
[...]
> OK, what's the deal with this lo'e? It was a recent debate on jboske, 
[...]
> The answer to our question, of course, is lo'e merko cu nelci le 
> kelcrbeisbolo : The American (the typical American) likes baseball.

IMHO {lo'e merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo} is false, and {le'e
merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo} is true.

This story of {lo'e} isn't complete, because it doesn't explain
{le'e} and seems to take over some of {le'e}'s territory.

[...]
> Swimming ain't swims. It's a mooshy glob of swims. That's why And is 
> saying it as lo'enu. For that matter, that's why Jorge and And have 
> said it as tu'o nu.

I accept and use lo'enu (and thanks for the much better explaination
of what lo'e means than what jboske has given).

However, "tu'o nu" is semantically the same as "<zo'e> lo nu", and
using it as a different article is just broken.

[...]
> So, when you know that Fred swims, you know a claim, not an event. And 
> just like events, claims are specific; they have all their arguments 
> filled. So you can know the propositions: {mi djuno ledu'u la fred. 
> limna la pacifikas de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1}, and {mi djuno ledu'u la 
> fred. limna la atlantikas de'i li 2001pi'e3pi'e15}, and {mi djuno 
> ledu'u la fred. limna la .indikas de'i li 2001pi'e7pi'e14}. And then, 
> you can squint, and induce a generalisation: {mi djuno lo'edu'u la 
> fred. limna}. {limna ma}? The question is invalid. You're not making a 
> claim about a particular swim, in a particular body of liquid. You're 
> generalising.

Ok this is where I disagree. There's only 1 of any kind of du'u.
"la fred. limna la .atlantikas." is a single du'u, there's no other
du'us you need to "squint" around. You can't just add "de'i" to
things and pretend it is the same. Adding those de'i makes them
into completely different propositions.

The speaker is also about to say the du'u, so clearly has it in
mind (which suggests that even if a generic article were needed,
you should probably use le'e---but that depends on what the exact
meaning of le'e is).

Same thing with ka. du'u provides propositions, ka provides
propositional functions. For this reason I always use "le" with
{du'u} and {ka}.

-- 
Jordan DeLong - [email-masked]
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku

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