"ro" doesn't imply +specific

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

Jorge seems to think that anything quantified "ro" is specific, and that if
this rule doesn't hold, we can't get any +specific sumti at all.  I believe
he has a hold of the right stick at the wrong end: everything which is
+specific is quantified "ro", but not vice versa.  The claim "All rats
have kidneys" is not +specific with respect to "all rats", but -specific;
it translates as "ro ratcu" or "ro lo ratcu" or "ro da poi ratcu ku'o".
We do not take the speaker's intent as authority for the meaning of
"ro ratcu"; we go to the current universe of discourse and quantify over
the set of all rats.

Such universal quantifications over finite sets can be +definite or -definite:
the 50 (not 51, And) states of the US can be +definite, but hardly the
zillion real-world rats; nobody even knows how many there are, never mind
knowing each rat in particular (urgh).  For this and related reasons,
I remain skeptical about the utility of a +definite/-definite marker in
Lojban; if it existed, it would surely be a discursive.

Apropos counting {jecta}: most USAnians don't know how many provinces Canada
has, and I vaguely recall that England (not the U.K.) has 56 counties, but
I'm very prepared to be told I'm wrong.  So 51 states isn't that bad.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.