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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 00:05:17

la and cusku di'e

>#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.

I was assuming scope by order of appearance, so "for some x,
both F(x) and not F(x)".

But now I'm not sure. If it were {e} I would have no doubt that
order of appearance was the way to go. For {gi'e} now I do have
some doubt, should it have bridi scope, the way {na} does?

I can think of reasons to prefer each of the alternatives...

>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.

I use:
{loi broda} = {pisu'o loi broda} = "some broda taken as a whole".
{lei broda} = {piro lei broda} = "the broda I have in mind taken
as a whole"

The justification for the default {pisu'o} and {piro} is the
same as for {su'o} and {ro} for {lo} and {le}.

Of course {loi cukta cu ki'ogra li pimu ije loi cukta cu ki'ogra
li mu} is true, it means "some bunch books weighs 0.5 kg
and some bunch of books weighs 5 kg". {loi cukta} obviously
cannot mean "_the_ mass of all books" if its quantifier is pisu'o.
It means "some fraction of the mass of all books". And the book
has that as the default. My discrepance with the book was about
{lei}, I knew there was one but I got mixed up. Of course,
translating {loi broda} as "THE mass of all broda" as it is usually
done helps to the confusion. {pisu'o} can never be translated as
"the"!

>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.

By X do you mean a bound variable: "for some X, it is true that
X is both broda and na'e broda", or do you mean it as a token
for the words {loi broda}: "[pisu'o] loi brode cu broda ije
[pisu'o] loi brode cu na'e broda". There is nothing contradictory
about the second one.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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