Re: Less expert opinion

[Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

Thanks for the answer, Matthew. Perhaps I was worrying
unnecessarily (but I know it takes me significantly longer
to read most postings in Lojban, so ...)

To turn to your questions:

1) 'mi' is ambiguous there (and my English reflexes made
me read it as 'me'. I suggest 'mi poi norcertu' - which is
still strictly ambiguous, but pragmatically suggests that
'mi' is not singular, as the restrictive clause would be
pointless then.
Nick once used 'mi pe va' for a plural, but I don't think
it works too well.

I've just thought of another possibility (ki'e .and):
'za'u mi' = more than one of me/us.

So to disambiguate your text:
di'u  preti fi la kolin. fain. mi poi norcertu .i mi po'u la matius.
spuda la'edi'u zoi gliban.
though it's a bit long-winded

2) I don't recognise fi'avla (fiction word). I guess you
have misremembered fu'ivla (copy word).
I (and others) objected to le'avla, first because it
means 'taker word' (should be selyle'avla) and
second because lebna is about taking, seizing,
obtaining, which I did not think appropriate for
the meaning.
I suggested fu'ivla (not ideal, but the best I
could come up with) and others have picked it
up.
I am sure that le'avla will continue to be used, in
that meaning, by the weight of history; but I shall
used fu'ivla (when I remember zo'o)

3) le/lo:  John has a paper in draft (to go into the textbook), but
I'll try.
The fundamental distinction between 'lo' and 'le' is indeed
veridicalness. But because of this, and their default
quantification, there is also a difference in specificity.

    lo remna
is elliptic for
   su'o lo ro remna
'at least one of all humans'

   le remna
is elliptic for
   su'o le su'o remna
'at least one of the at-least-one things I am describing
as human'


Therefore, the 'le' form is specific, the 'lo' form is not.


   mi klama le zarci
means
  I go to at least one of the at-least-one things I am
  describing as a shop.
but that 'describing' means that the sumti is (almost
certainly) specific.


  mi klama lo zarci
means
  I go to at least one of (all) the things which really
  are shops
which does not convey specificity (though it does
not rule out the possibility of you having a specific
example in mind).

For this reason, 'le' often translates 'the' and 'lo'
often translates 'a' or 'some'.

However, in my opinion, some writers use this last
equivalence unthinkingly, when they write

  mi klama lo zarci
to translate
  I went to a shop.

As I have said elsewhere, that is not wrong - it has the
required truth value. But it (in my view oddly) fails to
convey specificity when the circumstances imply it,
and is therefore highly marked.
In fact, now I think about it, I would be inclined to take
that 'lo' as implying  that the event has not yet taken place,
but is future or potential. This is a pragmatic implicature,
not a logical implication, and could be overturned by
context, for example:

  le verba cusku lu mi ca zvati le mivdalmuzga li'u
.i le drata verba cusku lu ko na bebna .i ti na'e
mivdalmuzga .iku'i mi lamprujeftu vitke lo mivdalmuzga lu

 "One child says 'I'm at the zoo.'
Another says 'Don't be silly, this isn't a zoo. But
last week I went to the zoo (really)'"

Where the 'lo' in context takes its primary meaning
of veridicality. I don't know if such an exchange would
ever happen - coming from English I would probably want
a selbri in there - to'erxanri or something. But perhaps
native se jbobau will use such forms!

        Colin