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la nitcion cusku di'e
And I don't hold with xod either that there's no point in formalisation. But I do hold with him that any formalisation of lo'e that does not make explicit a notion of typicality is useless.
Are useless threads not allowed on this list, then?
And if your formalisation of lo'e using buska contains a notion of typicality, I ain't seeing it.
It does not. For the moment it concentrates on the intensionality part.
Furthermore, your response to pc, "let's see whether my definition of lo'e is internally consistent before we see whether it has anything to do with CLL's lo'e" is, as you'd expect, a red flag.
That was because I want to know where in my definition the problem is. I don't want to mix rejections due to internal inconsistency with rejections due to CLL incompatibility.
You wanna do that, do it. That's what experimental cmavo are for. Establish that your lo'ei and Lojban lo'e are --- or should be --- the same thing; *then* proclaim their identity. Not before.
I have more or less established it to my satisfaction. The point of waiting to compare was to get pc satisfied first that the definition is not internally inconsistent, which was his initial objection.
The point of all this is, you are not completely wrong. lo'e *is* intensional, and non-countable.
Good! We agree about the basics then.
But you are making lo'e much more general than it should be, and I continue to find that unacceptable.
Ok. The problem with your restrictive definition is that you
will hardly ever have an occasion to use it then. Are there
any examples of {lo'e} in your Lojban writings?
Concretely (and CLL pretty much says it): {lo'e cinfo na xabju la
gugdrirana}: the typical lion does *not* dwell in Iran.
So the typical lion does not dwell in Iran, but the typical
chocolate is liked by some particular Iranian? The Iranian
likes chocolate, but Iran doesn't have lions? I think the
problem is that you are translating the Lojban sentence with
{lo'e} in subject position, and predicating something about
"it". But {lo'e} sits more comfortably as part of the
predicate in English, not as subject, because it does not
refer to any "it".
Come up with a formalisation of lo'e which accounts for that, and we're describing the same thing. Until then, we aren't.
Ok, but I still think my formalisation captures the essence
of {lo'e} better than a formalisation with {rau}.
As to formalisations, I've given you as much of a formalisation of lo'e as I think is warranted. More concretely, I don't think my formalisation is any less formal than yours.
It is not less formal, but it is purely extensional, so it
misses the main characteristic of {lo'e}.
You're trying to sneak in a lambda calculus paraphrase, but you're doing it through the back door, and with nonce gismu; but in the end, you're still defining lo'e through paraphrase. Well, so am I; but I'm capturing the notion of typicality, which you aren't.
I'm capturing the intensionality, which you aren't.
I don't think either of these paraphrase approaches are particularly satisfying, btw. I assume that's why you've started talking lambda yourself...
Indeed.
In particular:
>>It is true to say {lo'e cinfu cu xabju le friko}, because most lions
>>live in Africa most of the time; and *enough* lions live in Africa
>>*enough* of the time, that we are entitled to make a generic claim.
>I agree it is true. (I disagree about the reasons, though.)
Then you are disagreeing with the baseline. Because CLL says that's the
reason.
Yes, I don't mind disagreeing with CLL.
>>What are the properties of the Llamban {lo'e cinfo}?
>{lo'e cinfo} does not refer to any particular thing. Are you
>asking what the properties of lions are?
I am asking what can be predicated of it.
Nothing can be predicated of "it", there is no "it".
{lo'e cinfo} is part of the predicate.
I am asking whether it can
be said that {lo'e cinfo cu nakni}, {lo'e cinfo cu fetsi}, {lo'e
cinfo cu xabju le friko}, and {lo'e cinfo cu xabju le gugrdirana.}
Yes, all of them are true. They are not the kind of thing we usually want to say though.
My understanding is, under baseline lo'e, only the third claim can be made. The other three claims aren't true, because they aren't typical of lions, because they aren't true of enough lions to be tenable generic claims. CLL explicitly says the typical lion cannot be male or female, because there is no clear preponderance.
Lions can be male and female, just not at the same time (not in the same instance).
You've pretty much said:
>What is this Llamban you're describing? Does it have anything
>to do with me? {lo'e cinfo cu xabju ge le friko gi le gugdrirana}
>is true, of course.
No 'of course' about it, I contend. So we aren't describing the same
thing. And if lo'e cinfo is in any way derived from {da poi zo'e tu'o
ka ce'u cinfo} or whatever,
It is not. That's just {lo cinfo}. We probably are not describing
the same thing because I'm not describing a thing when I use
{lo'e cinfo}.
then I don't see how it can be the same
thing: your presentation of lo'e is a superset of what is canonically
understood by it, because it allows anything predicable of any lion
to be predicated of {lo'e cinfo}. And that's not helping.
I don't really predicate of lo'e cinfo. Rather I use
{lo'e cinfo} to predicate of other things.
There's a subtext with why I've all of a sudden gotten so aggro about defining words, which my fellow board members know well. Suffice it to say that you, Jorge, qua individual, can do as you please, and make lo'e mean la, or whatever.
There's {la} already for that meaning.
As if I could stop you. But when things get ex cathedra (and the baseline is still to be completed, so things are still to be said ex cathedra), lo'e cannot mean la.
I don't want it to mean {la}. I want it to have a useful meaning.
And more importantly, I want an article to express the generic.
It must mean what it was prescribed to mean, and what the majority of Lojbanists want it to mean. You may think Lojban is too important to be fettered by the fundies; all I can say is, when it comes to the completion of the baseline, it is too important for it not to be.
If that part of the baseline is still to be completed, then you can't say my use is against the baseline. If the baseline already determines that my use is against it, then what has the completion of the baseline got to do with it?
Make your lo'e encapsulate the *keyword* for lo'e, Jorge, and we can talk. Until then, we cannot.
Then I guess we won't talk. The keyword just doesn't give a
useful meaning. And saying that the keyword allows {mi nelci
lo'e cakla} to mean "I like chocolate" stretches the keyword
so much already that I don't really see your point.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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