Re: le/lo

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

On Thu, 30 Oct 1997 bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM wrote:
> My thesis is that {lo} provides more information to a listener than
> {le}; and that sometimes one is misled by the common English glosses
> of `the' for {le} and `a' for {lo}.

You and your lojban-speaking friend are sitting on a bus when two women
get on, one with an oversized bright green purse, and one with an
oversized bright red purse. They're the only other people on the bus, and
the purses really stand out as absurdities.  You happen to be sitting
close enough to see that the one with the red purse put a slug in the
till, and you want to point this out to your friend.

You can't say "lo xunre cu tcica lo brakarce", because 1) it wasn't the
purse that cheated, and 2) it wasn't the bus so much as the bus company
that was cheated.  So you have a choice of "le xunre cu tcica le
brakarce", or "lo ninmu poi bevri lo xunre cu tcica lo kagni poi ponse lo
brakarce".  I think the former is more likely and better.  So here's an
example where "le" gives more information than "lo".  "lo ninmu"  refers
to more things, in context, than "le xunre"; "le ninmu" is specific but
doesn't communicate enough information, and "lo xunre" is just plain
wrong.

So when you say "lo" provides more information than "le", you're
neglecting context -- and your cat/dog example confuses matters by
describing an unimagineable context.  If people were so unpredictable as
to refer to dogs as cats, then "lo" would always provide more information
than "le".  But in context, "le" probably is more informative most of the
time than "lo" could be, because people's intentions are often fairly
predictable.  "lo" would be more informative if, say, there were a cat and
a statue of a cat in the same room -- either one might be "le mlatu", but
only the real cat is "lo mlatu".  The possibilities are not really
infinite unless the people trying to communicate are from infinitely
different cultures.

But I do agree with your overall point about what le and lo mean and why
they shouldn't be simply translated as "the" and "a".