Re: xor questions (was Re: indirect Qs (was Re: On logji lo

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

la djan cusku di'e

>> >whereas {lu'a ci girzu} is "a member of three groups", not one of the
>> >three groups but a common member of the three.
 >
>I think that "lu'a" is vacuous (not invalid) when placed before a non-set,
>non-mass sumti.

I thought {girzu} was a mass. Ok, change the example to {lu'a ci selcmima}
or {lu'a ci gunma}. Those would be "a member of three sets" and
"a component of three masses" respectively.

>The trouble with the above interpretation is that then
>we don't know what to make of "lu'a ci gerku": a common "member"
>of three dogs?

Right, pretty meaningless unless the context makes it clear
what are the members of dogs. Out of context we don't know
what {la'e lo gerku} is either. If the only relevant LAhE were the
outermost, it wouldn't make sense for it to be grammatical
to stack them.

>Note that "lu'i" can be (somewhat) usefully iterated:
>
>        lu'i lu'i ci gerku
>        A set whose sole member is a set whose members are three dogs.

Right, and {lu'a lu'i lu'i ci gerku} would be a member of that set, i.e. a
set
whose members are three dogs. {lu'a lu'a lu'i lu'i ci gerku} would be
[at least] one of the dogs.

Lojbab:
>> That was the other, later, use of lu'a - to allow grouped sumti to
>> be labelled with a relative clause.  The earliest use, though was defined
>> for lu'i alone, and was specifically to allow selection of a number
>> of members from a set, such as the "Would you like coffee, tea, milk, or
> water?"

It would be interesting to see that question in Lojban. There we have the
additional problem of the intentionality of djica, of course.

co'o mi'e xorxes