response to la korant.

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

Your 5 mass statements are simple, but look carefully at the quantifiers.
I have put normally ellipsized quantifiers in brackets - they are needed to
properly understand what is going on.  Afterwards i summarize the default
quantifiers for the 4 descriptors involved.  Note that none of your examples
involve "lo'i" or "le'i" the set dewscriptors, which jimc misused.  lo'i vinji
is the set of all things that really are airplanes, and does not relate to their
components.

1. su'ore lo [ro] prenu   or   su'ore le [su'ore] prenu
2. same as 1; the distinction between lo and le is that lo refers to things
   that have the relevant property, whereas le refers only to the speaker's
   intended referent which is presumed to be understood by the listener or 
   the speaker would have given more information to restrict the referent.
3. piro loi [ro] prenu
4. ro lo [ro] prenu
   [ro] le ro prenu
5. lei pa prenu (you have a particular person in mind if it is only 1 
 like this would claim that there
    IS only one person in the universe)

Default quantifiers - the big secret

su'o lo ro prenu      at-least-some of the-set-of-all-who-are persons
                      (which set has cardinality 'all')
e.g. for comparison
su'o lo ci mela studjez.  at-least-one of the-set-of-all-Stooges (which set
                          has cardinality 3)  [Example included to make the
                          inner quantifier clear - I know there are problems
                          with other aspects of the semantics.]

ro le su'o prenu       all of the-set-of-things-that-I-describe-as persons
                       (which set-in-mind has cardinality at-least-1)

pisu'o loi ro prenu    at-least-some of the-mass-of-all-who-are-persons
	   	       (cardinality 'all')

piro lei su'o prenu    all of the-massified-set-of-the-things-that-I-describe-as
                       persons (cardinality 'at least 1')

le/lei/le'i must have at least one in the set; lo/loi/lo'i need not have any
in the set (in which case the su'o means 'at least 0' since 'ro' is also = '0')

In normal usage, all of the above implicit quantifiers (a better term than
'default' actually) are left unstated.  You only put in a quantifier if it
differs from the default value.  The resemblence of 'lo' to English indefinites
is purely a result of our choice for the implicit quantifier.  In JCB's Loglan
the equivalent word was 'lea' which had the default quantifier "ro lea ro prenu"
(all of the set of all who really are persons) which is only useful for the
logically risky universal claim, whereas 'lo' is of course useful for indefinites, where the speaker has no particular referents in mind.  But 'lo' is still
not quite the same as English indefinites ('a' or 'some' as articles).  If
you have even the slightest restriction on the set of persons being described
and do not make the restriction explicit with poi/pe/po'u etc., the you should
use 'le' instead of 'lo', and use explicit "su'o" to replace the default
implicit outside quantifier 'ro':  "su'o le <ro prenu" (some of the less-than-all persons that I have in mind) - usually shortened to "su'o le prenu"

Hope this helps.

lojbab