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And Rosta scripsit:
> > The important point is: When I say {lo'e cinfo cu xabju
> > le friko}, does that by itself exclude the possibility
> > of {lo'e cinfo cu xabju lo drata}? Is there only one place
> > where {lo'e broda}, for any broda, can live? John seems to
> > be saying that with CLL {lo'e}, {lo'e broda} can only live
> > in one place.
I was going to say it's a contingent fact about lions, but now I think
it's a non-contingent fact about mutually exclusive categories. When we
abstract away from lions to THE LION, then the lion-outliers blur away,
and we end up with lions in just one continent.
But we can refine the other end. Going to www.african-lion.org,
I find a table of lion populations by African region and by country.
Central Africa has 400 lions, West Africa has 500, Central Africa has
8800, Southern Africa has 8200. (These are 1999 minima.)
So on my view we cannot say that lo'e cinfo lives in any of these regions,
but if we construct a dvandva compound, Central+Southern Africa, we can
say that lo'e cinfo lives there.
With people, who live everywhere, blurring the differences between ro
lo remna into lo'e remna leaves us with no particular continent left.
But of course we can say that lo'e remna inhabits the planet Earth.
> "Man has a nonretractible penis"
Rather than saying that lo'e remna se nakpinji lo -nonretractible,
I would say that lo'e remna nakpinji cu -nonretractible, or that lo'e
remna poi se nakpinji cu -nonretractible. That prevents us from worrying
about the majority of remna who are not se nakpinji.
> I think it fairly clear that {lo'e} was supposed to do generics.
I agree.
> In the light of this, I'm happy with the idea that lo'e = loi'e,
> and that explicit claims about typicals and statistical norms can
> be made using appropriate brivla.
Yes.
> > Ok. I should have said: "Surely {da kalte loi'e cinfo} can
> > be true (in the right context), can't it?". John says that
> > {da kalte lo'e cinfo} just makes no sense
>
> Well, what is the right context? What state of affairs would
> prevail in the world as we know it, such that we would claim
> {da kalte loi'e cinfo}? I'd have thought that John might
> accept that in that state of affairs {da kalte lo'e cinfo}
> might also be appropriate.
Sure. If it was typical for lions to be hunted (if nonhunted lions
were outliers), then "da kalte lo'e cinfo" would be true.
> "There is someone that hunts the one lion". Nothing wrong
> with that, but if we're meaning it as a description of the
> world in general as we know it, then it is perhaps inapt, for
> in the process of abstracting away the differences between
> lions, the fact that a few of them are hunted probably gets
> lost. OTOH, if you examine every lion separately, but elect
> to (temporarily) hold that they are the same individual, then
> {da kalte loi'e cinfo} would be apt.
I think that claim is better expressed about loi cinfo, who is in Africa,
and in Iran, and in lo'e -zoo.
--
John Cowan jcowan@hidden.email
At times of peril or dubitation, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Perform swift circular ambulation, http://www.reutershealth.com
With loud and high-pitched ululation.