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la djan cusku di'e
My view, and I think this is in CLL, is that they are just a series of five vague numbers between ro and no, and that the English-language glosses are not to be taken seriously.
I'm not sure this is enough to explain them. Certainly the
English glosses have a strong influence in usage, and if they
are not to be taken seriously this should be emphasized much
more. Also, we should have some way to say "many" if {so'i}
does not really mean something close to "many", for example.
Ignoring for the moment the issue of ro=no, what happens
when ro is a small number? Are the so'V still usable as
"five vague numbers between ro and no"? Then:
ro=2, so'a=so'e=so'i=so'o=so'u=1
ro=3, so'a=so'e=2 so'o=so'u=1
ro=4, so'a=3 so'i=2 so'u=1
ro=6, so'a=5 so'e=4 so'i=3 so'o=2 so'u=1
I am sure we don't want that, so probably we want some
vague rule that so'V are useful only for large enough ro.
On the other hand "most" becomes useful for smaller ro
than "many", for example. Also, "many" can be "all", but
"most" can't be "all". This supposedly does not pass on to
Lojban, so we can't ever identify ro with so'i or so'u?
Also, in the case of very large ro, does {so'i} have to
fall somewhere around the 50% value? If I say that
{so'i gerku cu zvati le kumfa}, "there are many dogs in
the room", am I saying that around 50% of all dogs
are in the room? I don't think we want that.
On the other hand, {so'e gerku cu zvati le kumfa},
"most dogs are in the room", is strictly related to
all the dogs that there are, isn't it?
If there isn't a clearcut qualitative distinction
between so'a-so'e on one hand and so'i-so'o-so'u
on the other, we should explain this much more clearly
than what we've done so far. Either {so'i gerku cu zvati
le kumfa} is unreasonable, or {so'e gerku cu zvati le
kumfa} is reasonable, or {so'i} and {so'e} are
qualitatively distinct. The keywords certainly lead
us to the last choice.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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