TECH HARANGUE: LE/LO

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Jorge & I tend to agree on the meaning of LE/LO, so I will offer the
same answer in a different way.

We all agree that the logical form of {da broda} is "Ex broda(x)",
"There is something that is a broda", where "x" is a variable,
and that the logical form of {koa broda} and {la stiv broda} is
"broda(X)", where "X" is a constant.

The logical form of {lo broda cu brode} is "Ex broda(x) & brode(x)",
"There is something that is a broda and a brode". That will be false
only if nothing is a broda and a brode.

The logical form of {le broda cu brode} is "brode(X)".
(In the lojban of some people, such as me & Jorge, the logical form
is "brode(X) & broda(X)", but that's not official.) To find out
whether "brode(X)" is true, you find X and check whether it's a
brode. If you ask me "Xu le cukta cu blanu?", then in order to
answer I must first discover which book/thing you're talking about.

(In {Koa krici leduu le broda cu brode} there is an ambiguity,
as to who knows which thing it is that koa believes to be a brode
- it may be either me, the speaker, or koa. There are ways to rephrase
in order to force the reading that it's me who knows, so the default
interpretation of the above example should be that it is koa who
knows.)

Other definitions of le/lo are helpful but also treacherous.

>    le  LE    the described, the one(s) described as ...
>    lo  LE    the really is, the one(s) that really is(are) ...
>    le broda = each of the broda that I'm talking about.
>    lo broda = at least one of all the broda that there are.

{le broda cu brode} does not mean "X is a brode and I am talking
about X" or "X is a brode and I describe X as a broda" or
"Ex x is a brode and I describe x as a broda". As I said,
it means only "X is a brode" (or, for some lojbanists, "X is a
brode and X is a broda").

As demonstration of this point, consider the command
{le broda cu brode ko}. This means "Make it the case that
X is your brode"; it does not mean "Make it the case that
X is your brode and that I describe X as a broda".

---
And