Re: 'any' as discursive

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

coi rodo

I was unsubscribed to the list for a week, due to a combination of
our system manager's not-quite-competence plus Lojban list's
hypersensitivity to bounces, so I missed some posts. Could someone
who still has them mail them to me? (Everything between my last post
and pc's recent post.) Thanks a lot.

Now, back to business:

la pycy cusku di'e

>         Veion suggests that 'any', when not all in disguise, is a
> discursive that means "no hidden conditions apply".  His example, "I will
> eat any apple," however, seems to fail on both counts.
>         First, the sentence as he uses it is pretty clearly not a
> prediction, but an offer.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen Veijo's post yet, and my comment is really
off-topic, but I think the distinction is interesting:

        mi ba citka lo plise
        I will eat an apple

is always a prediction in Lojban, in the sense that it claims an event
that will happen in the future. On the other hand,

        mi [ca] pu'o citka lo plise
        I'm going to eat an apple

is not a prediction. It is a claim about the present, and of course
it is infected by all sorts of intentionalities, and it may be true
even if I never end up eating an apple. (It still refers to some apple,
not to any arbitrary apple, though.)


la djer cusku di'e

>         This makes it clear just how pleiomorphic  and ambiguous this
>         little word of English can be.  I think if we ever get it
>         working properly in lojban it will have to take many different
>         forms. Just as the connective "and" did when lojbanized. I am
>         still opposed to trying to capture all the English meaning and
>         behavior of "any" in one word.

I agree. For example many of the meanings of "any" are already covered
by {ro}, but some are not.

>         Looking at the above analysis it appears that the meaning can be
>         broken down into three elements.
>                 1. exactly one apple is under discussion.

This sentence is misleading, even if we are sure that the number of apples
in question is one. You certainly can't point to the apple under discussion.

>                 2. It is a typical apple. No outliers are under
>                 consideration.

This is a matter of pragmatics, I think. In principle there should be no
such restriction, but it could be assumed from context, like the "within
reason" is understood in English. The bare claim would be the absolute one.

>                 3. It is a randomly selected apple.

I wouldn't say it's randomly selected. It is never selected in fact, because
the claim doesn't apply to a selected apple, it precisely applies to an
unselected one.

>                 4. (2) and (3) are connected by the logical &.
>
>                 So we have one typical and random apple:
>                 In lojban this goes:
>                 pa lomci je cunso plise       (or possibly):
>                 lo paboi lomci plise ije cunso plise?

"Typical" is {fadni}, not {lomci}, but I don't think we should define "any"
like this.

>         Maybe we need a word for precisely this.  It could be a start on "any"
>         Would it parse?  Are quantifiers proliferating to excess?

{xe'e} added to selmaho PA would parse, of course, since it is not a change
to the grammar.

> XE'E, XE'E, XE'E, XE'E, XE'E ...........I heard that laugh, jorge.

I wasn't laughing, it was just a cough, really.


la kolin cusku di'e

> So building on your idea, I think it is something like
>         lo fadni je se cuxna be no mi be'o plise
>
> which would function OK as a dictionary definition of 'any apple' in this
> sense but is not terribly useful in everyday use. But maybe if we need to
> express th8s precisely, this is how to do it.

Well, this is still transparent. {lo fadni je se cuxna be no mi be'o plise}
is still an apple that you can point to in order to show which one it is that
makes the claim true.


la and cusku di'e

> Xehe indeed. This is pretty much my understanding of what Jorge proposed
> & I seconded, with the following differences:
>  (1) "one" is only a default, and any number can be specified. (As in
>      "any five books")
>  (2) 'Typicality' in the sense of 'average, unexceptional' can I think
>      be left to pragmatics. That is, "I am willing to eat xehe one
>      apple" *should* entail that I am willing to eat a rotten apple
>      shat on by a skunk, and the fact that this is not what I intend
>      you to infer can be left to normal processes of communication.

I agree.

On a related topic, I'm not sure whether {lo'e} has the meaning of "average,
ordinary" or not. I think it should mean "archetypal" rather than "typical".


>  (3) It is not *randomly* selected but *arbitrarily* selected.

I would even say that it is not selected at all.


Jorge


PS: Again, if someone would send me the posts I missed, I'd be grateful.