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I finally read JCB's two articles on gadri posted to the Loglan site.
These date from 1995, long after the split, and clarify very thoroughly
just what JCB meant by all his distinctions. If only he had figured
this stuff out before 1988, Lojban would have been much better off.
JCB has five gadri (I'm going to use Lojban jargon and Lojban cmavo, to
avoid confusion despite the anachronism): le, le'i, loi, lo'i, lo'e.
He uses quantifier+brivla in the same sense we do, and consequently
dispenses with lo. He has no analogue of lei. But what does he mean
by these things?
Le as is well known is Distributive when it's plural; when it's singular,
of course it's Singleton. (JCB's term is "multiple", but he means
Distributive.) So far so uncontroversial.
In the first essay, http://www.loglan.org/Articles/sets-and-multiples.html
, JCB tells us that le'i and lo'i are about Collectives, not mathematical
sets, and that this is what he has *always* meant by the term "set"
in his writings! (JCB doesn't believe that mathematical sets deserve
a gadri; in particular, the "empty set" is not a useful notion for him.)
In the second essay, http://www.loglan.org/Articles/sets-and-masses.html,
JCB corrects several places where he had used loi to represent Collective
in _Loglan 1_. (The online edition has the corrections made already.)
So loi is *not* Collective, except by error. What is it then? Well,
it is and always has been Kind, he says! And he conflates Kind with
Substance, on the grounds that it is all one whether you myopically
singularize all birds into Mr. Bird, or goo-ify all quantities of water
into Mr. Water. This also explains why he doesn't have lei: it's not
too useful to talk about the Kind of something subjectively defined
(= specific). His lo'e is CLL-lo'e, since he has loi for Kind.
I suppose it is too much to ask that Lojban return to its roots in
this fashion. But how bad would it be to conflate Set with Collective,
and Kind with Substance? I'm half converted already.
--
John Cowan <jcowan@hidden.email>
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan http://www.reutershealth.com
Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes,
Set anz totz pleinz ad ested in Espagnes.