From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Mon Apr 16 11:30:39 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 16 Apr 2001 18:30:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 6747 invoked from network); 16 Apr 2001 18:30:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 16 Apr 2001 18:30:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta02-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.42) by mta3 with SMTP; 16 Apr 2001 18:30:38 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.252.13.40]) by mta02-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.02.27 201-229-119-110) with SMTP id <20010416183036.BARP290.mta02-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Mon, 16 Apr 2001 19:30:36 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Three more issues Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 19:29:43 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200104161418.f3GEIFP31641@hobbiton.org> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Avital: > Issue A: (This is mainly for la xorxes.) > Without using sets, how can "There are many rats" be said? (The book > says it as This means (in effect) "The rats are many (in number)", not "There are many rats". That wd be {so'u da ratcu} ["so'u" = "many", from memory: correct if necessary], which means (in effect) that the set of all rats has many members. > Issue C: > Since tanru are (very) semantically ambiguous, how can we allow > ourselves to define language concepts using tanru (e.g. , > , etc? Those would mean extremely 'wide' concepts! You're right, sort of. {sumti tcita} succeeds communicatively, because although it expresses a wide concept, speakers have no trouble inferring which narrow concept is intended. But the downside is that {sumti tcita} becomes idiomatic and hence practically unusable to communicate the wide concept or some different narrow subportion of it. Hence once a particular tanru threatens to become idiomatic, one ought to lujvoize it. > Issue D: > Why the hell does mean what it means? How do the two terms > connect, and why would it mean only one word? What's the real > difference between a brivla and a selbri, then? I mean, > is lo valsi, isn't it? Yes, tho not pa valsi, of course. {brivla} means what it means because the language/usage defines it thus. There's no obligation for the lujvo sense to follow logically from its parts. Brivla is a class of single words (ku'i cumki fa le nu mi srera). Selbri is a class of phrases (consisting of one or more words). --And.