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

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

da cusku di'e

> >Well, feel free to quote Book at me as well, but so far as I am
> >concerned they're not the same. For example: {lu'a lu'i ci girzu}
> >is "a member of a set of three groups", i.e., one of the three groups,

Correct.

> >whereas {lu'a ci girzu} is "a member of three groups", not one of the
> >three groups but a common member of the three.

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> I am pretty sure the last is invalid, by perhaps Cowan will speak up.

I think that "lu'a" is vacuous (not invalid) when placed before a non-set,
non-mass sumti.  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?

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.

> 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?"
> without requiring impossibly complex connective statements

This usage of "lu'i", however, is now OBSOLETE, having been replaced by "lu'a".

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban