Re: {soi}

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

And:
> Perhaps this relates to the issue of how anaphoric references to
> pluralities work: does {re prenu cu prami py} mean they each love
> themself, or does it mean they each love each of them? I think
> Jorge & others were debating this for each of the systems of
> anaphora, but I forget (or never knew) what the upshot was.

I don't think we ever got anywhere, because we were sidetracked
with other issues.

There are (at least) three forms: {re prenu cu prami py},
{re prenu cu prami ri} and {re prenu cu prami vo'a}, that could
all mean the same or not, and could mean "themself", "each of them",
or something else: "them (as a mass)".

My preferences are:

- That {vo'a} mean "themself". In other words, {prami vo'a} is
  simply the predicate "x loves x", filled in this case by {re prenu}.

- That {py} (also ko'a, etc) massifies its antecedent, so that
  {re prenu prami py} means that two persons love both of themselves.
  The massification is not very different in this case from saying
  that each of the two loves each of the two, but in other cases it
  simplifies matters. For example: {re prenu cu klama le zarci i py
  te vecnu lo plise}. With massification it means that they bought
  an apple. Without massification it would perhaps have to mean that
  each of them bought an apple. In general, if the antecedent is far
  back, it would be a pain to remember the distributive meaning.

- I'm less sure about {ri}, but I think it should be either like
  {vo'a} or like {py}. To get the distributive meaning in that
  case one would need to specify {ro ri}.

> I would prefer to take John's point, and see our mainly in-English
> use of {sumti, bridi} as loose and ambiguous, as English words often
> are, and say that the Lojban meanings of {sumti, bridi} really are
> as the giuste has them. In that case, if {mi klama}, then {mi sumti},
> and not if {lu mi klama liu se bacru} then {zo mi sumti}.
>
> I prefer this, since I think the logical meanings are more basic and
> more firmly grounded than the syntactic ones.

I prefer it too, but it won't be easy to take away from {sumti}
the meaning with which it has always been used.

> In this case, we should start being pedantic and use
>
>    sumvla    = valsi be lo sumti
>    brivla    = valsi be lo bridi & not = "brivla" as currently used
>    selbrivla = valsi be lo selbri
>
> I forget the in-English difference between "selbri" and "brivla".

A selbri may be composed of several brivla, e.g. in tanru.

> "Selbri" denotes a syntactic funtion, the grammatical predicate,
> and "brivla" denotes words that can function as "selbri".
> But in that I see no basis for a terminological decision.

In {mi mutce gleki}, the selbri is made up of two brivla: {mutce}
and {gleki}.

Jorge