Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: Nick will be with you shortly

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 20:31:56 -0500

>My solution (to be refined and what-not):

>Collective: loi [so'a/su'eci'ino] finprcarka
>Substance: loi [ci'ipa] finprcarka
>Kind: [tu'o lo finprcarka] => lo'ei carka (new LAhE, but
>paraphrasable as normal individual sumti with quantification turned
>off)
>Any: either Propositionalism (what Lojban does now --- prenex
>of embedded clause), or Kind, depending on the selbri; [fi'u ro loi
>finprcarka] (in the right contexts).

>The Collective/Substance distinction is fully optional (so both still
>get to be lojbanmasses), and stated on the inner quantifier; but the
>distinction can be made if people choose to. (Right now, that just
>plain isn't possible.) The Kind ("Mr Shark") is disambiguated from
>the lojbanmass by giving it a new LAhE, though it can also be stated
>(prolixly) in terms of existing sumti structures and turned off
>quantification. (Anything true of the Kind is true of the lojbanmass,
>but I'm not convinced the converse is true.) The Any problem (how to
>say Any shark as distinct from A shark in the completely general
>case) admits of several solutions, none perfect, although we're now
>putting more thought into it; when we go into non-existing entities,
>we add something like {tu'o lo se ka co'e} or something (to be
>thrashed out), as distinct from {lo co'e} (which commits to existence
>of the referent; And, this was the coup John and I pulled on you in
>NYC.)

I really like this. I don't completely grok the problem, but at this point I
do understand that there is one. However, I feel that although the baseline
is unclear, I feel like usage has 'felt right' and am therefore very
supportive of backward-compatibility on loi. This would use loi where I
would expect, and not where I wouldn't, but it would also be more clearly
explained.

And now, getting into the trivialties, I would prefer finprcoke to
finprcarka - because 'shark' comes from the mayan 'xoc' (pronounced like
lojban cok).