Re: Some how-do-you-says

["Jorge J. Llambias" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

And Rosta wrote:
>
> How to render in Lojban:
>
> 1a The people each read **a different** book.

        le prenu cu tcidu lo frica cukta

No problem here, because the scope of "lo" is within that
of "le". You cannot however rephrase as:

        lo frica cukta cu se tcidu le prenu

which does not mean: A different book is read by each
of the people. It rather means that there is at least
one "different book" read by all.

>
> 1b the couple who are respectively french and german

        le remei poi ge pa ke'a fraso gi pa ke'a dotco

The slight difference is that the Lojban here allows for one
member being franco-german and nothing is said of the other,
but I think pragmatics should take care of that. If that's
what you meant you would just say:

        le remei poi pa ke'a fraso gi'e dotco

>
> 2a the mothers of Xorxe and And

        le mamta be la xorxes a la and

i.e. Each of those that are either mother of Xorxe or mother of And
(or both). Notice that this does _not_ expand to:

        le mamta be la xorxes ku a le mamta be la and

>
> 2b the mothers of the men

        lei mamta be lei nanmu

If you don't want to use lei you can say:

        le mamta be su'o le nanmu
        Each of those that are a mother of at least one of the men.

I think that the proper scope here is as in:

        ro da poi su'o de poi nanmu zo'u ke'a mamta de

>
> 2c the children of the women

        lei panzi be lei ninmu

or:

        le panzi be su'o le ninmu
        Each of those that are a child of at least one of the women.

>
> 2d The french and germans [not only people with dual nationality]

        le fraso e le dotco

        lei fraso ku joi lei dotco

>
> I can only manage them with long circumlocutions. Are there some
> tricks I'm missing?
Tricks indeed they are. I don't think there is a standard easy way
to respectivize.

> Mark Vines responds:
>
> Because I'm only a beginner, my suggestions may be less than
> reliable, but I have a suggestion regarding 2a-2c, & that is
> to use {vrici}:
>
> 2a  le vrici mamta be la xorxes. je la .and.
> 2b  le vrici mamta be le vrici nanmu
> 2c  le vrici verba be le vrici ninmu
> 2c  le vrici panzi be le vrici ninmu
>
> If my suggestion is incorrect or suboptimal, I hope someone will
> say so.

I don't think that works. In 2a you're describing each of the
things as being vrici mamta of both Jorge and And. In 2b you
talk of each of the vrici mamta of everyone of the vrici men,
and so on.

Chris Bogart wrote:
> And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK> said:
> > 1a The people each read **a different** book.
> le prenu pa'a tcidu le cukta
>
> (The cmaste happens to use this very example; look under pa'aku.
> It means "respectively")

Yes, unfortunately it does. This has nothing to do with the usual
function of BAIs though, so I don't find it correct. To me it means
that each of the people read each of the books, and this happens in
parallel with something.

If BAIs are going to have this power of meddling with the scope of
quantifiers, it should be explained in much more detail than as a
lost example in the cmaste, I think.

> > > 2a the mothers of Xorxe and And
>
> le mamta be la xorxes .e la .and

I think that has to be a mother of both. It does not expand to
le mamta be la xorxes ku e le mamta be la and. Didn't we
talk about this some time ago? I'm feeling all dejavuish.

Jorge