WikiDiscuss

1. sometimes "the brodas" too, though that seems more likely to be about species.

2. Yes, the gehavior may be common (even) without being typical and it is the common that one wants. Unlike old {lo}, which is about particular — though unspecified — individuals on particular occasions where they could be dientified, what is wanted is groups of perhaps different individuals in different situations, no longer recoverable individually. Yet factual, not definitional nor (usually) universal (which get closer to species use).

3. No, a new gadri with a grammar (and a semantics) like {lo'e}, but without the stigma of typicality.

4. Yes, this is a thrid (or are we up to fourth) distinction tht is sometimes called extension-intension. It is related to the one I was working on below in that the specification in one *lists* the extensions and in the other the intension; but both listing give the set, an extension, not the property, an intension.

5. As you know, I am not convinced that old {lo} and {su'o} really are the same. Certainly there are places where {lo} occurs that {su'o} cannot in the same meaning (before internal quantifiers, for example) but they seem trivial. Nor is it clear that generic usage is more unmarked than particular, but that is a fault of the ambiguity of the notion of marking. Still, what is essential here is that we need both somehow and that we don't have them now..Since {lo} is fairly well-defined in one use, it seems natural to add another expression for the other use. On the other hand, it may turn out on, say, Zipfean grounds, that the generic use is so markedly more common than the particular that giving it a longer form is just criminal. Then the misuse — especially if it is buried in a lot of otherwise valuable text — might justify the change.

6. Variously, I gather. Perhaps a Russian or a Chinese expert can help here. As far as I can make out for Medieval Latin (which, admittedly was moving toward articles), they mostly did not make the distinction overtly but worked implicitly by context and explicitly by correcction when errors occurred (see the whole discussion on the proprietates terminorum which are large sorting these things out). Classical Sanskrit seems about the same and scholastic Sanskrit basically never talks about particular cases — except through lengthy periphrasis; "locus of brodanessness" or so.

Jorge Llambías <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
pc:
> What {lo} seems to be used all to often to shoot for is that
> wondrously vague sense of English plurals,

1.English bare plurals, yes. Not "some brodas" or "all brodas" or
"the brodas", but just "brodas".

>"the" generic expressions and the
> like, which are closer to {lo'e} than anything else presently in the
> language:

2>That's why I used {lo'e} for that for many years, but it didn't
c.tch on. And even to me, it always seemed too marked, and there
was always someone around to point out that that's not what
"the typical" means.

> that is they talk about the members of a class but without an
> specific number being relevant — one is usually too few, all is usually more
> than is strictly required, and within that not all count equally for the
> claim. This is not intensional but just a different way of looking at a
> class, by weight, as it were, rather than by number. It is also different
> from thinking about the class itselr as a node in the conceptual tree --
> closer to {lo'i} but again more somewhat isolated from the members (though
> {lo'i} may work jhere — my proposal just
> leaves the answer to that for later and meanwhile gets on with business).

3.Your proposal at this point is to use {lo'e}, right?

> To be sure, the difference between a set and the property that defines its
> are sometimes said to be the differnce between extension and intension, but
> that is a different distinction by that name from the corresponding talk
> about contexts (though there may be some deep or remote connection).

4.The difference in terms of sets that I'm familiar with is in how
a set is defined. A definition by extension is a list of the
members, whereas a definition by intension is giving the property
that the members have. So the same set A can be defined either way:

by extension A={2,4,6,8}
by intension A={x/x is an even number greater than 1 and less than 9}

The same set can have different definitions by intension.
Lojban uses {ce} for definitions by extension and {lo'i} for definitions
by intension.

> B: Well, we ought to find some way of expreessing generic usage, but that it
> be {lo} is at least controversial. that {lo} has been misused (against the
> Book) in this way in the past hardly justifies continuing to do it.

5. I agree that that is not in itself a justification but just a supporting
argument. Another supporting argument is that nothing is lost in terms of
expressiveness because {su'o} duplicates the job of old-lo. Also, because
the proposed sense is more general that the old and covers it, past usage
is hardly invalidated but at most may read as a little more vague than
intended. And since in a sense {lo} is supposed to be the least marked
gadri, it should go to the least restricted notion.

6.How do languages without articles handle this? Always using {lo}
and making distinctions of specificity by other means would be
like having a language without articles.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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