Subject: Re: loi (was Re: [lojban] Rosetta Project Genesis translation)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 21:37:06 EDT

In a message dated 5/25/2001 5:59:12 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I have no idea what "gavaggai" means, and how does naming this bizarre 
> concept
> "Mr. Rabbit" help at all? What does the Mr. mean?
Sorry! I lose track of where everyone is in pursuing these issues. The 
story (from Malinowski through Quine) is that Trobriand Islanders see all 
rabbits (for examples) as being one super rabbit (the sense of "Mr.", I 
suppose, more physical than Plato's rabbit-its-own-self), who is totally 
present wherever a rabbit is and so does all that any rabbit does -- as we 
would put it. But our putting it that way misses what the Trobriander means 
when he says (I don't know whether this is authentic) "gavagai" which is not 
"There goes a rabbit" but "Lo, Mr. Rabbit." And that Mr. Rabbit is one of 
the things that {loi ractu} means. Or, as I would want to say, is one of the 
metaphors to explain how {loi ractu} works. If it doesn't help, I have some 
more.

> > A third part is the disambiguation of sentences like "Chicagoans drink 
> more 
> > beer tha New Yorkers"
> 
> Wouldn't that use lo'e or le'e?
> 
The sentence is at least three ways ambiguous: Each C drinks more than each 
NY, 
the typical C drinks more than the typical NY (and that could be two, 
depending on which of the two readings of {le'e} you go with), or the Cs 
altogether drink moe than the NY altogether. The last is {loi}.