Subject: Re: [Re: [lojban] Re: still pondering on le/lei/la/lai...]

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 13:21:45 EDT

In a message dated 00-06-17 11:49:14 EDT, tiyuting writes:

<< So (back to my legally interesting aspect): Is it necessary for /lei etc./ 
to
at least being present to the piano-carrying-event, e.g. supervising the
action, or is it sufficient *just to be member of a specific *mass*???

Well, the official line seems to be that it is enough just to be a member of 
the group, but things seem to get complicated by several factors. 

First, the differences among {lei}, {loi}, and {lai}: {lei} sets up a group, 
so the assumption is that it sets it up on the basis of some feature common 
to its members and then all the members share that feature -- participating 
in the piano moving, say. Further, the default external quantifier on {lei} 
is set as {piro}, suggesting that all the members are involved in what ever 
is attributed to the mass. In the case of {loi} (and, I think, {lai}) the 
underlying class is a "natural" one, not set up for the occasion, and the 
default quantifier is {pisu'o}, meaning that the whole mass may be credited 
with what only a submass -- down to a single member -- or maybe even less -- 
does.

Second, different predicates call forth different intuitions: the weight of 
the mass is the sum of the weights of the members, the acheivements of the 
mass are the interactive results of the achevements of the members -- or 
maybe only of some of them, a submass, ignoring those who contribute nothing 
(but they may be included as well, though they have 0 interactive products), 
and so on. In this connection, it seems to make an intuitive difference 
whether the outcome is generic or particular: authors write books but, we 
usually want to say, an author -- or a small specific mass -- writes a 
particular book. 

Third, what a mass does and what is done to a mass call out different 
intuitions as well, though this is harder to document clearly, mainly because 
the distinction is not too clear to begin with. However, it keeps coming up 
in cases where nothing else seems to work.