[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Jorge:
> >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
Where does the typicality part come in? That's always been
where my reservations lay in equating lo'ei and lo'e.
> >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?
It's always going to be you against everybody else on this issue.
You hold that it is better to redefine cmavo so that the existing
forms have meanings that are as useful as possible. Everybody
else holds that it is better to leave cmavo with baseline-conformant
meanings. The latter school then divides into two further schools.
The one holds that it is better to abandon useless official cmavo
and use useful experimental ones instead. The other holds that it
is better to use existing cmavo and be satisfied so long as one is
understood by like-minded members of the same school.
As it happens, though, generics are not so uncommon. In English
they tend to surface as bare plurals, though arguably that
would be {na'o ku lo brpda} or {na'o ku so'e broda}.
> >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"
Clearly we need some way to capture the difference:
The typical lion is such that it lives in Africa (and not Iran).
Some Iranian is such that they like the typical chocolate.
I don't know whether we can find a way to do this with na'o,
or with the implicit generic quantifier underlying Generic
Quantifier lo'e, or whether we need some new construction, such
as a generic version of poi'i.
> >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}
Nick's gets typicality better. Yours arguably gets intensionality
better (except, as I say in another message, yours seems to me
to be {tu'a lo}). Mine gets both typicality and intensionality
indirectly, and I don't think it is a substitute for yours or
Nick's -- that is, even given loi'e and lei'e, we still need
ways to make explicit claims about the typical Chicagoan, and
we still need to be able to talk about lion-tamers who don't
tame lions.
> >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
Does a lion-tamer (who has not necessarily tamed any lions) tame the
Lion? (It is certainly not the case that the Lion is such that it is
tamed by Jim.) I can see how one could answer Yes and how one could
answer No. A lion-tamer tames lo'ei cinfo, but does not tame
loi'e cinfo. (A lion-tamer doesn't tame tu'a lo cinfo, but does
co'e tu'o du'u LT (na'o) tames lo cinfo.)
BTW, don't anybody give me any crap about being a ka'e lion-tamer.
A lion-tamer who hasn't tamed lions ka'e tames lions, but is a
ca'a lion-tamer.
--And.