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la nitcion cusku di'e
When you say {lo merko}, you
claim some objective knowledge of the membership of {American}. The
same should hold when you say {lo'e merko}: one should not be
intrinsically more subjective than the other.
To me, {lo'e merko} is not at all about the membership, i.e. the
extension, of {lo'i merko}. It is about its intension.
But I'm with Jordan: you may be involuntarily locally squinting, but
surely you are thinking you are globally squinting: surely you are
thinking you are saying something characteristic of most Americans,
when you say {lo'e merko cu mebli nixli}.
Under myopic singularization, the concept "most Americans" makes
no sense, as there is only one American. Consider what happens
when you say {la meris cu melbi nixli}. You are taking {la meris}
as a single individual, squinting to see her as a pretty girl
even though she probably is not a pretty girl in every instance
of her (when she is 43 years old, for example, maybe she is not
quite a "pretty girl"). And yet you don't want the claim to apply
to a particular time, you squint and you talk as if there is no
time and all you see under the circumstances is that Mary is a
pretty girl, because that's the relevant part of Mary that stands
out in the situation. Similarly, in some odd situation it could
be conceived that {lo'e merko cu melbi nixli}. I don't think I
would say that in normal situations though.
There's an out here: you can say stuff about {lo merko} without needing
to know every single American, because you use the sense of the word
rather than its denotation --- the definition, rather than the
enumeration ("An American is defined as..."). But I currently don't
think this extends to {lo'e}. I think lo'e is meaningless without a
notion of surveying: a reasonable sense of what the actual population
does, not just a definition.
I think that's the key misunderstanding of {lo'e}. It is NOT about
the enumeration. No averages or modes. It is the sense and only
the sense that matters, much more than with {lo}. You can even
squint {lo'e broda} into existence when {lo'i broda} is empty.
To weasel: people may differ in how they squint, I suppose, but anyone
seeing Liv Tyler when they squint at {lo'e merko} is, I submit, not
really getting the point of {lo'e}.
I agree it would require some very special context. Certainly
it would be nonsense to claim {lo'e merko cu melbi nixli} out of
context, which is naturally taken as a very general and global
context.
And as Adam said, they can
legitimately be corrected; they can't with {le'e}.
But {le'e} is a different thing, it is about a specific set
{le'i merko}. Here we only use the sense of {merko} to help
us identify a specific set we have in mind.
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, John Cowan wrote:
>
>> Jorge Llambias scripsit:
>>
>>> Suppose you tell me "I need a box to put these books in.
>>> Please get me one."
>>
>> mi nitcu pa le tanxe selcmi poi seltisna lei cukta
>>
>>> I would say: {mi nitcu lo'e tanxe lo nu setca
>>> lei vi cukta ty i e'o ko cpagau mi ty}.
On this, I'm with John. This is no surprise given the party lines and
personalities :-) , but I think it is also consistent with the story
I've told.
But there is no one box such that I can say that I need it.
When I squint away the differences between box, one thing they obviously can not have in common, or even have a preponderance of, is colour.
{lo'e tanxe cu vrici le ka skari}.
"Boxes come in different colours".
So: .i xu su'o da zo'u da skari su'o tanxe .i go'i .i xu su'o da zo'u da skari so'a tanxe .i na go'i .i xu su'o da zo'u da skari lo'e tanxe .i na'i go'i 'Typical box' is a phantom; and it cannot have a colour.
But lo'e tanxe can have any colour. What colour it has in a given situation depends on the situation. Are you saying that the typical box can't be seen?
Jorge's intensional box is also a phantom; but unlike the 'typical box', there is an expectation that it will be instantiated by a real box (you'll eventually find one); and that box will have a colour: .i mi nitcu lo'ei tanxe .i xu su'o da zo'u da skari ri .i go'i fa da kaunai The "fill in a blank here" box does have a colour; it's just unspecified and uninstantiated. There's no na'i about it.
Very interesting use of {kau}! Can you explain the {nai} there?
I would have just used {makau} for "whatever colour".
The typical box does not have a colour.
That sentence sounds odd in English, because the typical box does have some colour, in some cases several. mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail