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At 03:15 AM 12/19/02 -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Jordan DeLong wrote: > On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 10:08:20PM -0500, John Cowan wrote: > > And Rosta scripsit: > > > 1. substance > > > 2. prototype. > > > 3. unique. > > Unique still makes no sense to me. > > > I think this is exactly the Right Thing in every respect, and > > with the addition of 4. individual(s), should form our new gadri > > system. I do think however that the term "unique" is bad, because > > it suggests that there is literally, rather than notionally, only > > one of the thing. Whereas in fact what I take to be going on is> > a sort of superposition of the actual things (birds, Superbowl games, etc.)> > Wait a minute. What's the "new gadri system". I don't think we > can or should abandon the current system. But you've been here as we've discovered just how broken it is.
Not all of us are convinced that it is broken. It does not make some semantics distinctions that And wants to make. It is a little sloppy in others, in ways that bother Jorge. But some of the problems stem from other decisions that have been made. The current debate seems to presume that most gadri claim the existence of some referent for the sumti, but this itself is a decision that there was controversy over, in part because of the problems that existence claims cause.
> Any clarifcations which are made should be just that---we can't and > shouldn't change things so that "loi djacu" is meaningless and no longer > means bare "water" or whatever crap xod was pushing. What a difference a few hours makes. Before, you were insisting that le djacu can refer to any amount of water...what then do you want lei djacu to mean? Other than reflecting the peculiarities of English, what are the qualities exhibited by an individual glass of water which are not enjoyed by "some" water? Or vice versa?
At one point, I believe, le was a somewhat vague gadri, in that you could use it for masses and sets and collectives and whatever. By that version (which may or may not be jboske-acceptable at present), you'd have more to discuss in comparing lo with loi, than le with lei.
The difference I see between lei djacu and le djacu has to do with countability and dividability. lei treats all of the relevant djacu as a single mass, which can be subdivided. le treats the djacu as countable and identifiable chunks that each display the relevant properties of djacu. lei can always be expressed using le with a quantifier of one, but we don't necessarily presume that pimu le djacu has the relevant properties, whereas we presume that any fractional portion of lei djacu that we might refer to itself displays the relevant emergent properties of the whole.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org