On 8/1/08, Mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "lo" means a/any/some/all of a thing, which is specified in a more objective > fashion, although not an absolutely objective one. Thus, I could describe > the Supermodel Of The Week as "lo melbi ninmu" even though beauty isn't > objective, and even if I personally _don't_ consider her beautiful, because > that's a generally accepted description for her.
Would you talk of "the beautiful woman" in English if you don't consider her beautiful? I suppose in the right context you might. That's the problem with discussing these things without any context to understand what we are talking about. Notice also that in "lo melbi ninmu", you don't necessarily require that what you are talking about is beautiful. It might be a woman related to beautiful things in some other way than by being beautiful. A woman that collects beautiful things, say. It would of course require some unusual context to get that sense across. Perhaps if we were talking about different types of collectors. > "le" means "one particular thing which I'm thinking of, One or more than one, yes. > and which is specified in a subjective fashion". > (It must necessarily be specified in a > subjective fashion because by using le at all I'm asking you to figure out > which particular one I'm specifying, if I wanted to be completely specific > I'd have to use a relative clause I guess.) OK. > So if I am, say, the one person > on earth who finds Nora Random to be beautiful, I can refer to her as "le > melbi ninmu" if I want to. Sure. That doesn't guarantee we will know who you are referring to, unless we can figure it out from the context. > However, if I refer to the Supermodel Of The > Week as "le melbi ninmu", it doesn't necessarily mean I find her attractive, > because I could just be using the objective description in le, which I am > not debarred from doing. If you don't consider her beautiful, it would be an odd choice of description, unless you want to be facetious (which you can of course be in Lojban as in any language). > So if I meet you, and you are out walking your dog, but I also know that you > have another dog who is at home in your yard; nonetheless, if I say "le do > gerku", you may take it to mean the dog you are walking. Probably, yes. Especially if what you say about it concerns the immediate context. If you say "za'a le do gerku cu ca'o vikmi seka'a le mi jamfu", I'm unlikely to think you are talking about my at-home dog. > The same words > could refer to the dog back in your yard, but "le" necessarily asks for your > common sense in interpreting it. > > Is this about right? Yes. Just about anything one says requires common sense to interpret. Try saying something as precisely as you can, and it will generally be easy to misinterpret if one tries to. But listeners normally try to interpret the intention of the speaker, not to misinterpret it. mu'o mi'e xorxes
