Subject: Re: [lojban] le medomoi e le memimoi e le memi'omoi

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 01:25:10

la and cusku di'e

>The lei/loi versus le/lo distinction doesn't matter if there's only
>one of a given thing. But if you're not certain of this, but wish
>to refer to a single thing, then lei/loi are the appropriate
>choice.

If only lei/loi were less marked than le/lo, I would agree. But
I feel them as more marked, and I just don't think that {le du'u}
is wrong enough to justify the effort of unlearning it.

>Loi is more appropriate than lei for at least two reasons. Firstly,
>there's no getting away from the fact that lei -- ko'a voi -- is 
>nonveridical
>and so makes truth-conditionally different claims from veridicals.

If anything that would be an argument in favour of le/lei. I'm
not even sure that I know what a real du'u is.

>Secondly, the logic of ko'a voi/poi in contrast to da poi, is such that
>there is a referent (which must be established contextually, irrespective
>of whether it turns out that there is only one candidate referent).

Both {ko'a voi} and {da poi} require that there be a referent, if
that's what you mean. {ro da poi} is the only one that doesn't
have existential import, but {[ro] le [su'o]} and {[piro] lei [su'o]}
both do.

>Hence
>use of le ~ lei ~ ko'a voi/poi is always more context-dependent than
>lo ~ loi ~ da poi.

Maybe, but I still can't see that it makes any significant difference.
Do you have any examples where this could cause a problem?

>On top of this, some uses of "le nu" are plain wrong.

In the case of {nu}, I have to admit that sometimes I use {le nu}
even though I suspect it is wrong. Maybe I should start paying
more attention to that.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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