From jorge@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Sun Apr 11 20:23:02 1999 X-Digest-Num: 111 Message-ID: <44114.111.616.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 00:23:02 -0300 From: "=?US-ASCII?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" Maybe the confusion lies in the use of "that" the English glosses: "that which I >call" and "that which really is". What precisely does "that" mean here? The >normal deictic use of "that" would make both {le} and {lo} refer to a particular >thing - I was assuming that this was not the case, but rather that > >{le cipni} = something that I call a bird >{lo cipni} = something that really is a bird The second is correct, but the first one is not, it should be "everything that I'm calling a bird". The quantifier matters! I'm not taking it as deictic in either case. I changed "I call" to "I am calling" so as not to confuse it with "everything that I usually call a bird", which is not what {le cipni} means. >> le ci verba cu citka lo plise >> Each of the three children eats an apple. >> >> Had I used {le plise}, the meaning necessarily would have been that >> each child ate the same apple (or apples, but each child eats them all). >> >I don't think {le} demands this, though it may suggest it. It demands it. It maps directly to what would be in logical notation something like: For every x which is one of the three children, and for every y which is one of the apples, x eats y. >Going back to the >discussion of proverbs, you made the same point about my > >> le lajgerku na batci le lajgerku >> >which you said meant that no dog bites itself". This is not the same point. Here I said that repeating the same description in one sentence suggests to me that the described is the same object. In any case, that means: It is not the case that: for every x which is one of the dogs and for every y which is one of the dogs, x bites y. >This is not necessarily true, >just as in English "the dog didn't bite the dog" could mean either "the dog >didn't bite itself", or, more probably, "the dog didn't bite the other dog". It could mean either, I agree. But this is not a quantification problem. > In >classical (truth conditional) semantics, both interpretations are possible, but >in pragmatic terms, in English, Lojban and every other language I know, the >former meaning would be expressed by a reflexive. Yes, and the other would be expressed with some qualification like "other". But I insist that this is not the same issue. >{.a'u.ue} I find {lei} quite useful. Consider the difference between > >mi se batci le gerku >mi se batci lei gerku >mi se batci le ci gerku >mi se batci lei ci gerku I never said {lei} wasn't useful. In {mi se batci lei ci gerku} I may or may not receive three bites, is that what you mean? The difference is more striking in examples like: le ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o lei ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o which clearly have to refer to different situations. All I meant was that if you had to choose one single article and drop all others then it should be {lei} which is in my opinion the most basic. co'o mi'e xorxes