WikiDiscuss

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> Jorge Llamb=EDas wrote:
> >What does {ei lo verba cu fraxu lo makcu prenu} mean according to you?
>
> I must interpret it extensionally, resulting to "some children...some=20
> adults", unchanged from the old-lo, and not a really as a maxim=20
> *because* of it's lack of ro.

Ok, but that's not the proposed lo. The proposed lo does not have
a hidden quantifier that you must glork from context. All the
sentence says, with the proposed lo, is:

"It should be so that: CHILDREN forgive ADULTS"

Nothing more. That's all the statement says. How you take that to
particular instances is up to you, it is not contained in the
sentence. It says nothing about how many children should do what
to how many adults. If you want, you can add precision in different
ways. One way is to add universal quantifiers to one or both
terms. Another way is to add tense for example:

ei roroiku fe'eroroiku lo verba cu fraxu lo makcu prenu
Everytime and everywhere children should forgive adults.

> And the hypotheticality given by .ei might=20
> be enough to avoid nerdy criticism of "all". I used to think that the=20
> non-specificity of lo forced the statement to apply to the entire type,=20
> but now I don't.

The non-specificity of lo doesn't force anything about instances.
It is simply not a statement about instances.

> "Some lions hunt at night" means at least one does, and only means that=20
> we can no longer say that none do.

Of course, that's what {su'o cinfo cu kalte ca lo nicte} means.

> It doesn't tell us about the habits=20
> of lions, which I cannot see as anything but a ro statement (if part of=20
> the definition of lion) or a so'a statement (if an observed property,=20
> god forbid you should neglect the outliers).

But {lo cinfo cu kalte ca lo nicte} is meant neither as "some lions
hunt at night" nor as "all lions hunt at night". It is meant as the
more vague "lions hunt at night", without reference to the number of
instances. If you are told that, you may or may not be interested
in enquiring further, "do they hunt only at night?" "do they hunt
every night?" "does every lion hunt at night?" "does every lion
hunt every night?" "do only lions hunt at night?" and many other
questions, none of which are answered by the original claim, though
they may be suggested by the context.

The information of number of instances is just not contained in lo,
which is good because sometimes we are not interested in it. If we
make lo overprecise, we don't have a way of expresing ourselves
when precision is not possible or not wanted.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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