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Nick:
> A substance is loi tu'o broda
> Individuals, collectives, and substances of collectives are all loi
> tu'o ro broda
> I think the collective vs. substance of collective conflation is bogus,
> because a substance of collective can *still* be phrased as loi tu'o
> broda; and such second step abstractions are pragmatically more like
> loi tu'o loi ro broda, if you're going to put quantifiers in there.
> (Yes, that's grammatical.)
The reason I said it is "substance of collective" is that the absence
of inner tu'o gives it its collectivehood, but the rule the properties
of the parts inherit to the whole -- if that it not merely a function
of the outer pisu'o -- makes it more like a substance.
My problem in contributing more authoritatively to the debate is that
it requires a Jordanic knowledge of Scripture. It's not enough to just
think about the problem rationally.
At any rate, John's *intent* was that there is no context-independent
logic of jbomasses, and if that is at all definitive then {piroloiro}
could be reasonably safely said to do collective.
> It is distressingly clear that Lojban is shortchanged of any tools to
> distinguish between collectives and substances, and I'll settle even
> for gismu at this stage
{loi tu'o} does substances.
{lo tu'o} presumably does a countable amount of universal-grindee.
{lo PAmei} does countable collectives.
{piroloiro}, {pirolu'o} probably do uncountable collectives.
In other words, {tu'o} erases the boundaries between members.
{lo} gives you countability. {loi} gives you uncountability.
Adding {piro} before {loi} makes sure you are actually referring
to {loi} and not to {pisu'oloi}.
So... I think your wish is granted....
> 2. lo'e
>
> The candidate senses are: Statistical (e.g. mode), Prototype (mental
> definition), and Unique. The founders (addled once more) seem to have
> preferred Prototype (which matches stereotype), I've retracted
> Statistical, and And has retracted Unique (apparently), so this is
> resolved
>
> A secondary issue is whether anything inherited can be predicated of
> lo'e: do you study or draw lo'e cinfo, or is that only meaningful as a
> definitional trait? To keep our sanity, the latter
It has to be the latter. Otherwise it is broken.
> 3. Unique
>
> And has fumbled this badly, as he will himself admit, but people are
> slowly starting to see the point to this construct. It was begotten of
> kludgery, and pressed into service to solve everything, but it is
> handy. It is a generic like the prototype. making an individual of a
> population by regarding the actual individuals of the population
> instantiations of the one underlying individual
>
> By speaking of Lions that are all underlyingly the same lion, And had
> made his interlocutors dispute his sanity. Speaking of Mondays, or the
> New York Times --- things we are used to abstracting an underlying
> individual out of instances --- would have helped him rather more. The
> Unique is an individuated version of the Kind (as in "I own that kind
> of car", treating all Porsches as the one thing), which treats the
> population as a single entity. As such, it corresponds to many an
> English use of the generic
>
> This looks headed for its own LAhE
I wonder whether:
lo du be ro broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda
would suffice (by the criteria that the BF uses to judge sufficiency)?
> 4. Intensional article
>
> We may or may not need one
[...]
> If we accept that le broda need not have a referent in this world (so
> we can speak of {le fipni'u} or {le xavlerfu gismu} meaningfully}, then
> {le} is already non-commital as to whether its referent exists in this
> world or not, by virtue of its nonveridicality. What would serve as an
> intensional article then would be a counterpart to {le}, with no
> specificity. And would invent a new paradigm of gadri; I would be
> rather happier with a UI kludge
>
> And says that Unique is not veridical either. It is true that in
> English we would say "Lions live in Africa" and "Elves live in Mordor".
> But I think the assumption that prototypes and Uniques in Lojban are
> non-veridical is rash
Of late I have thought that Unique is veridical in the sense that
it can be done as {lo du be ro (lu'a) (lo'i)/le'i/la'i broda}.
I think we can simulate intensionals (that would cope with cases
where lV'i broda is empty) as:
le du be ro broda
le du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
le du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda
NB This message is meant as a contribution to SL not to AL. IOW,
the issue is "Can SL express the notion?", not "What means of
expressing this notion would satisfy our needs?".
--And.