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At 02:50 PM 1/5/03 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
la lojbab cusku di'e
>This is why I introduced da'a (which BTW I think should be used
>instead of me'iro, which flashed by my screen in the last couple of days in
>some context).
Is {da'a} by itself {da'apa} or {da'asu'o}? The latter is
indeed equivalent to {me'iro}.
It is elliptical in the same way that all of the other omitted words are elliptical. When we specify a "default", we are doing what I think And called "short-circuiting Grice" - setting up an assumption that allows people with insufficient language and culture knowledge, or insufficient context can start with in trying to figure out what is meant. We specify these defaults in order to suggest usage too: by specifying a default outer quantifier of "pisu'o" on loi, we suggest pitu'o is a proper form for a quantifier in that position, so we are less likely to see people trying to talk about multiple masses.
In other situations, we do not specify the Gricean default, though there is one. Lojban is officially tense optional, but in most cases, omitting a tense means present tense, so we could say that the default tense is "present". We did NOT do so, because that would confirm for English speakers precisely the wrong message: that non-present is marked and present is unmarked. But there ARE no instincts for the articles since they do not correspond exactly to anything in English.
I suspect that defining the gadri well would eliminate the need to specify a default, which in turn would render the question moot.
In fact, da'a converts among all four quantifiers:
da'a ro = no
da'a no = ro
da'a su'o = me'iro
da'a me'iro = su'o
BTW, I was using {da'asu'o} for "not all" before you suggested
using {me'iro}. I now think {me'iro} is a bit better because of
the above table, but they are logically equivalent in any case.
Well, I guess that if I suggested it, it MUST be better %^)
>Invoking Whorf, if I say that noda poi jelca is in the drum, then that >really means NOda, and lighting a match should be safe. How could you possibly light a match under those conditions?
%^) -- 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