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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 01:26:33

la adam cusku di'e

>Logically, I don't see a difference between "pisu'o loi broda" and
>"su'o lo pagbu be piro loi broda"

They are about the same, if you ignore that pagbu is a more general
term and could refer to non-broda parts of the mass.

>(and if we're talking just about
>individual properties, between "pisu'o loi broda" and "su'o lo
>broda").

How could we be talking just about individual properties?!
Indeed the only difference between them are the mass
properties that one has and the other doesn't.

>The difference is rather one about what is being talked
>about. When I say "loi cinfo", I am thinking about and making a claim
>about all lions, even though logically I don't mean anything more than
>"lo cinfo".

But you should mean something more:

loi cinfo cu jitro le vi tutra
Some lions (as a group) control this territory.

lo cinfo cu jitro le vi tutra
At least one lion controls this territory.

The second one allows for more than one lion controlling
the territory, but only if each of them controls it individually,
which would be strange, and in any case is a different claim.

>I would use "lo cinfo" when I mean some lions, without
>implying anything about lions in general.

Only if you're talking of properties that each of the lions
has individually.

> > >Yes, it weighs all of them.
> >
> > But there is no "it" to speak of! Every time you use it {loi broda}
> > can refer to a different chunk of broda.
>
>Well, if you insist that the mass isn't a separate object
>ontologically, then yes. We could debate that instead, I suppose.

That's not what I'm saying, I have no problem at all with its
ontology. I am saying that each part of the mass is a separate
object. A property of some part is not necessarily a property
of the whole. If you say that {loi broda cu brode i loi broda
cu brodi}, then you are not saying that there is one single
object, "the mass", that is both brode and brodi. You are saying
that one part of the mass is brode and one part (possibly a
different part) is brodi.

>In
>general, I would use "lei mu cukta" to mean that I conceptualize the
>books as a single object with lojbanic mass properties.

Me too, but then you agree with me that {lei mu cukta} is
{piro lei mu cukta}. {pisu'o lei cukta} refers to some part
of those books, and there can be many different parts.

> > >a: i mi nitcu lo ki'ogra be li papimu
>
>What a is saying is that
>there exists some 1.5 kg object that a needs (without saying whether
>it's a specific 1.5 kg object).

No, the claim as it stands is that if we check each and every
1.5 kg object, we will find at least one such that it is that
object that a needs.

The claim in English "a needs a 1.5kg object" usually means
something different: that a requires a situation where there is
at least one 1.5kg object such that a has it. The quantification
has to be inside the need, but Lojban grammar puts it outside
in {mi nitcu lo broda}, that's why we must use some
other expression, {mi nitcu tu'a lo broda} or {mi nitcu lo'e
broda} or something else.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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