Re: Some thoughts on Lojban gadri

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

mi pu cusku di'e

> > But if so, then the quantifier "piro" proposed by Jorge for "lei" won't
> > work in the way we expect.  "lei re prenu", viz. "la alis. joi la djordj."
> > has four legs, and the notion that if Alice is small and George is big,
> > then the mass is both small and big, breaks down.  Alice-joi-George would
> > have to be compared to other masses-of-two-persons, not to individual
> > properties of individual persons.

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> I thought I was the one that proposed this - a long time ago.

The 10/88 cmavo list says "pisu'o lei ro"; my sumti paper assumes "pisu'o lei
su'o", since the 10/88 context makes clear that the inner quantifier is
supposed to be "all of those I put into the mass", but inner quantifiers
(really cardinal numbers, as pc says) refer to the class upon which we are
drawing to make the in-mind selection.  But "pisu'o" has always been the
outside quantifier for lai/lei/loi.

Jorge proposed "piro" for lei (and presumably also lai), making claims about
in-mind masses implicitly claims about the whole mass, on predicate-logic
grounds.  I believe those grounds are incorrect (see one of my postings
from yesterday), because outside quantifiers on masses are not truly 
quantifiers in the sense of predicate logic.

> The archetype
> of lei is the two men carrying a log (together) across the field, in which
> case you WANT the default quantifier to be the entire mass rather than a
> portion.

Do you?  What if one hauls and the other supervises?  I would consider that
a legitimate example of a mass property, just as the nose of the hauler
doesn't really participate in hauling, but belongs to the hauler-mass just
the same.

In such a case, it is only part of {lei re nanmu} that hauls.

> On the other hand, I gues the "Relevant portion for context" could
> suffice here too - the smallest relevant portion just happens to be "all".
> But this seems to be stretching things.  I have no problem with "lei re remna"
> having 4 legs as a default for most remna pairs that I know.

Remember that a claim to have four legs is a claim to have exactly four legs.
There is no doubt that "piro lei re remna" has four legs exactly (assuming
two-legged persons), and that "pisu'o lei re remna" has any number from
zero to four.  But what is the interpretation of "lei re remna" without a
fractionator?  Historically, it has been the latter case, "pisu'o".

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.