Re: "re lo'e broda" is semantically bogus

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> The sumti paper says that {su'o lo'e ro} is the default quantifier of {lo'e}.
> If it doesn't make sense, I guess it should be fixed.

Maybe it should be fixed.  What do you propose?

> I prefer to think of {lo'e} as the opaque gadri, especially since it seems
> that {xe'e} won't be accepted. And maybe {le'e} would be the opaque gadri
> with in-mind restrictions. When Santa says that he needs a box, but not any
> will do, he has a 'type' of box in mind, but not a particular box.

I don't believe that "lo'e" is a generalized opaque gadri (or "le'e" either),
because they refer to abstractions, not to real instances.  {lo'e tirxe} is
neither male nor female, even though all real {tirxe} are either male or female.

> So we have {re lo'e remna kakne le nu zutsi le sfofa}, because I'm not
> restricting it to any special type of remna, just any two.

I would render that as:

	ro remna remei kakne le nu ...
	Each human-being pair is able to ...

since it is a universal statement about what pairs of persons can do.

> But {la santas
> nitcu le'e tanxe}, because he needs a certain type of box, not any old box
> whatsoever.

I render this as:

	la santas. nitcu tu'a lo tanxe sa'enai
	la santas. nitcu le nu da poi tanxe sa'enai zo'u da co'e
	Santa requires the event-of (there-exists-X which is-a-box (loosely)
		such-that X has-some-property)

where "sa'enai" tells us that although the referent of "da" is unquestionably
a "tanxe", there are unexpressed restrictions.  Note that in Lojban "looseness"
can move either toward extension (the box isn't really a box) or toward
restriction (the box is a special unmentioned type of box).  If you don't like
this use of "sa'enai", you can say:

	la santas. nitcu tu'a lo co'e tanxe
	Santa needs the obvious kind of box.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.