Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Three more issues

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:57:10 +0100

Jorge:
#but for me {loi cinfo} means
#{pisu'o loi cinfo}, some part of the mass of all lions.
#There is nothing contradictory there. However, I would not
#agree with:
#
#loi cinfo le fi'ortu'a cu xabju gi'enai xabju
#
#because that would claim that the same part of the total mass
#of lions both lives and does not live in Africa.

Isn't there a scope issue here, if "loi ro lo cinfo" expands to "da
poi ke'a du pi su'o loi ro lo cinfon"? Then if da is within the scope of
"gi'enai" then you're right. If "gi'enai" is within the scope of
da then you're wrong.

That said, I'm not sure that this "pi su'o" interpretation of
masses matches our intuitions about them, as witness the
example of weighing 100 kilos (where X weighs Y iff 
the whole of X weighs Y). As I said in an earlier message
of today, the piro/pisu'o interpretation is determined by
the predicate.

In cases where the pisu'o interpretations is appropriate, as
with "is sunburnt" or "lives in Africa", "X is sunburnt and
X na is sunburnt" and "X lives in Africa and X na lives
in Africa" make no sense, but "X is sunburnt and
X na'e is sunburnt" and "X lives in Africa and X na'e lives
in Africa" do make good sense, so my conclusion is that
na-contradictions don't occur but na'e contradictions
do.

--And.