TECH: goat's legs; quantification and restriction

["(Logical Language Group)" <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

>From Mark Shoulson on goat's legs and quantification:
>I've been mulling over John's comments about how in Lojban something like
>{lo'e remna cu se tuple reda} has to be a complete enumeration.  Something
>about it didn't sit right with me, and I think I have some worthwhile
>comments on it.

I ran this and the preceding message from Cowan by Nora.  We may need pc
to give a definitive answer, but Nora thinks that there is no problem.

>John says the enumeration must be complete, that is, you can't say that a
>goat has two legs, even though it has, because to speak completely, you
>have to say it has four.  Well, let's play with some other expressions:

Possibly misstating what Cowan said.  He said that you cannot use (an
unrestricted) "reda" as the x1 place of tuple in respect to goats unless
you mean exactly two.  It is the lack of restriction on "da" that causes
the problem, and not the "tuple", nor even necessarily the "da".  But
since the "da" is unrestricted, the third and fourth legs would also be
among the "da" and you are therefore making a false statement:  among
da's there ARE exactly 4 things that be-leg a typical goat.

>"He has small hands" can be expressed prettily and lojbanically as {ko'a se
>xance lo cmalu} (I will not be forced to say {lo xance be ko'a cu cmalu}).

Looks good.  No "da" here.  "lo cmalu" is one or more small things.
There is no requirement that the x1 of xance be a complete enumeration
of hands.  The implicit outside quantifier on "lo" is "su'o", and NOT
"pa".  Thus, as long as at least one of the hands of ko'a is small, the
statement is true.

>What if I want to say "He has one blue eye"?  John will forbid me from
>saying {ko'a se kanla pa blanu} if in fact he has more than one eye...

This says that among the eyes of ko'a (if there are more than one),
exactly one is blue, and no more or less.  There is exactly one BLUE THING
that is an eye of ko'a; there may be other things that are eyes of ko'a, but
they are not "lo blanu"

>...  Near
>as I can tell, John's restriction boils down to making words like {kanla}
>and {xance} and {tuple} mean not "is/are eye(s) of...", "is/are hand(s)
>of..." and "is/are leg(s) of...", but rather "are all the eyes/hands/legs
>of..."  He probably doesn't mean this, but it really seems the only way to
>interpret his restriction.  Would I have to say {ko'a se kanla pa blanu ku
>jo'u zo'e} in order to imply that he at least might have other eyes besides
>the one blue one I mention?

Thus this is not implied by John's statements, nor by Nora's and my
understanding.


>And don't start telling me it's only with {da}-series words.  Would John
>permit me to say {lo'e kanba cu se tuple re tuple}?  I doubt it; it's
>incomplete.  (I suppose I shouldn't have use {re tuple}, given my
>discussion above; how about {re datci}).

No, it is an unrestricted da-series word that John actually used in his message.
It is the restriction that is important, and it is merely that restriction
becomes an issue with "da" more often than with other sumti values.

"lo'e kanba cu se tuple re tuple".  Nora thinks that you should not be
permitted to say this (and be true).  Because within the restriction
that you have stated (things which are legs), the value "exactly-two" is
NOT the correct number (su'ore would be fine, though, both here and with
"da").  Assuming you mean "dacti" instead of "datci", the same holds.

>Nor will I accept that it only works with numerals.  For one thing, that
>breaks a lot of the Lojban model, and for another, everything is implicitly
>quantified anyway.  Besides, what about "There were many things on the
>floor, among them my foot (one of my feet)": {so'ida cpana le loldi .ije
>pada jamfu mi}.  I'm told the ijek doesn't reset {da}'s, so this should be
>right.

In this case, the "da" has been restricted by the first sentence to include
only things on the floor.  Of the things on the floor, presumably EXACTLY
one is your foot (not two), in which case the Lojban is fine.

>This seems to be another incarnation of the "only" discussion we had a
>while back, with our different translations of "only".  John would have me
>believe that {ko'a se kanla pa blanu} means "he has one blue eye *only*",
>and that just doesn't seem to work for me.

No, but, it could be translated as "he has only one blue eye",
recognizing that some usages of "only" imply that one is referring to a
subnormal portion of the whole.

lojbab