Re: Some thoughts on Lojban gadri

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

Bob Chassell says:

>     lo broda        At least one of all things that broda.
>
> Yes, but bear in mind that the {su'o} and {ro} are merely *default*
> values.  Unless explicitly specified as {su'o} and {ro}, an unadorned
> {lo broda} utterance may (but usually does not) imply some other value
> for them.

I understand by "default" that unless there is an explicit quantifier,
that is the one to be taken implicitly.

Of course, if we don't agree in that, we are going to reach different
conclusions.

BTW, the inner quantifier of {lo} is always {ro} anyway. But the outer
quantifier is critical to evaluate truth values. If we understand it
differently, obviously we are going to interpret claims differently.

> If the context is such that there is one `for real' broda and one
> other thing I might `designate as' a broda, {lo broda} does
> distinguish one from the other.

The problem is that you seem to be identifying context with universe of
discourse. Suppose there is a (real) cat in front of us, and I tell
you {mi ponse lo mlatu}. Do you assume that the cat in front of us is
mine? That's not what I would mean by that, because in the usual
universe of discourse for everyday conversations, there are millions
of real cats, and all I'm telling you is that I own at least one of them.
On the other hand, if I had said {mi ponse le mlatu}, you'd be justified
in assuming that I'm talking about that cat in front of us.

{lo mlatu} refers to at least one of all cats, not only those within
sensory range. {le mlatu} is the one I mean, which may even not be a
real cat but usually will be. The listener would be justified in
assuming it is the most obvious one from context. If this is not the
one that the speaker had in mind, the communication wasn't totally
succesful.

>     loi broda       Like {lo broda}, but instead of taken idividually
>                     a group of broda is taken as a single entity.
>
> An ambiguous comment: do you mean `the mass of individuals taken
> together, like a pile of Christmas trees in the back of a truck', or
> do you mean `a manifestation of the notion of Christmas tree, by
> default (but not necessarily) a single Christmas tree'?

The former.

I disagree that {loi tricu} is by default a single tree. In fact it is
totally ambiguous as to number, and can't even be disambiguated directly,
because you can only talk about masses in terms of its fractions. This is
what differentiates it from {lo tricu}, where you can give the number if
desired, and in which case the claim applies to each of the trees
separately, which is not true in the case of {loi tricu}.

Jorge