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Nick:
> Damn you all :-) . But I'll make no attempt to engage in discussion,
> while the mess of these threads is unresolved (or even while it isn't.)
> I'll just throw points out from time to time
>
> One, Jorge says {loi} must be collective, because it has an inner
> quantifier, and inner quantifiers are only compatible with individuals,
> and if a Lojban string is grammatical it must be meaningful. To the
> last, I say bullshit. That's a bogus assumption, particularly since any
> fundamentalist solution to these problems will use existing grammar.
> Let some strings be meaningless. Otherwise, we have to drop the whole
> grammar; and this is not going to happen. And honestly, if you were
> going to drop the whole grammar, why didn't you introduce mid-sentence
> prenexes instead of your intensional article anyway?
This is my fault. You're reporting the reasoning I attributed to
Jorge. Actually, as he points out, "lei ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno",
does have meaning, if usage and CLL are any guide to what does
have meaning.
> Three, I think I finally got an instance where And's Unique works. A
> pox on everyone here for not coming up earlier with examples that show
> how it works *in English* (and to hell with the Trobrianders; if we
> here now don't get it, how will we ever teach it, and how will anyone
> else ever get it?) (And did come up with some decent examples later on,
> but hasn't insisted on them. He should learn to: the Unique will never
> be sold on the basis of "All lions are one lion".)
I'm a backroom boffin, not a salesman. I trust you to sell it!
> That example is what started this whole sorry mess: I like chocolate
True. I prefer "this depicts a snake", another example from that early
phase of discussion, because it's easier to distinguish a single snake
from the agglomeration of all snake substance than it is to distinguish
a single countable amount of chocolate from the agglomeration of all
chocolate substance. And even if you can make that distinction with
chocolate, I actually have come to the view that the meaning we want
here is the agglomeration of all chocolate substance.
> Individuate chocolate howsoever you choose. Pieces, packets, whatever.
> What does it mean when you say {mi nelci LVV cakla}?
>
> The Prototype of chocolate defines chocolate ahead of time as something
> you like. Bzzt
Debatable. A 'cultural prototype' abstracted from individual minds
does not have as a ptototypical-property the property of being liked
by Nick. OTOH, a Nick-specific prototype does have as a prototypical-
property "I like it", so this could be argued to work for "I like
chocolate". BUT, it wouldn't work for "John likes chocolate", unless
you can talk about a John-specific prototype (and that's not the
job of a gadri).
[...]
> The Substance of Chocolate is very close, but even here, we get into
> implicit quantities. Not inner, because we admit substance has no
> individuals to quantify, by definition. But outer: should you be able
> to say you like half the substance? And what would that mean?
I deny that Substance involves implicit quantities.
> If we insist on Substance not Collective for {loi} (which I still think
> is the fundamentalist thing to do),
The most fundamentalist thing to do would be to see {loi} as some
sort of grungey conflation of Substance and Collective. The second
most fundamentalist thing, given {lei ci nanmy cu bevri le pipno},
is to make loi/lei Collective, which will also satisfy the larger
body of disscussants.
> we might work around that. But if
> we try Unique here instead, I think we're OK
>
> When you like Nick, you don't just like a bunch of avatars of Nick, or
> even most of them. You see an underlying individual behind all the
> avatars, and you like that
>
> When you like chocolate, you don't just like the individual pieces you
> eat. You like the individual behind all the pieces. That individual is
> pretty close to the prototype, but the prototype is a definition; the
> Kind, you can still find out about
Since countability and 'masses' entered the discussion, my understanding
has changed slightly. Substances are uncountable. Non-substances are
countable. Unique is non-substance, so lo-Unique is countable (but when
you count it there is only one). So lo-Unique cakla might mean something
like "the one chocolate (of the sort that come in chocolate boxes)",
which in English might be said as "I like chocolates".
What has changed here is not my conception of lo-Unique but rather
my conception of what cakla means when not accompanied by a Substance
gadri.
(BTW, for Substance gadri, I am rather taken by xod's suggestion of
using not a special gadri or LAhE but an inner tu'o.)
> And And's Unique is a Kind. As in, chocolate is a kind of thing I like;
> or, I like that kind of chocolate: this takes the individuals belonging
> to the kind, and treats them as a single, indivisible thing. But it
> admits that the Kind has avatars, of individual pieces; whereas masses
> don't admit that
>
> And now I'm getting confused again, because that still sounds like
> masses (one piece chocolate?), so I'll leave it for someone else to run
> with
I will ignore these two paras, because they raise issues that will
complicate the discussion more than is currently necessary.
--And.