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Lessons Errata Chapter 4

  • Chapter 4
    • I think the notion that "loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno" is a legitimate transform of "lu'o ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno" is no good. In the latter sentence, there are only three men involved, even if there is no telling which; but in the former, all human beings are conceptually if not actually involved. The two sentence have the same truth conditions, doubtless, but not the same semantics. Paedagogically, I think that this is not the way to introduce loi at all, though it works well for lei. Instead, it would be better to create a new scenario involving one of the "creatures of loi", Mr. Monkey or Mr. Water or whatever.
      • What I may do is do {lu'o le > lei}, which is straightforward, then {lu'o lo > loi} with a disclaimer, then tack on Mr Rabbit on the end as an alternative way of looking at things --- maybe as a note.
    • Answer to exercise 3.6: the question asks to translate "The group of four women kiss Ricky Martin". This wording seems to indicate a specific group of four women in mind. My answer was then "lei vo ninmu cu cinba la rikis. martin." The answer in the answers section was instead "lu'o vo lo ninmu cu cinba la rikis.martin." which seems to me to say something closer to "some group of four women kiss Ricky Martin".
    • Answer to exercise 3.7: prami > nelci (the exercise says "likes", not "loves")
    • Maybe change the phrasing of "[...]read as vo ki'o musore. ki'o also has the[...]" to prevent misreading "vo ki'o musore. ki'o" as 4,592,000.
    • s/harrassed/harassed/ Or is this a Commonwealth spelling?
    • The example of ungrammatical German der Frau is a bad example; this is perfectly valid grammar, as long as you're referring to the woman in the genitive (das Buch der Frau = le cukta po le ninmu) or the dative (Ich gebe der Frau das Buch = mi dunda fi le ninmu fe le cukta) case. I suggest changing it to something else such as das Frau or die Mann.
      • In the same spot, 'the two womans' is fine in English, except that the plural of woman is 'women', not 'womans'. 'the two woman', however, is as bad grammatically as 'more better' (which should be 'even better') or 'I gots the ball' (to indicate the ball was 'gotten' (another bad example) in the past).
        • Which means the example stands as bad grammar in English.
    • pg. 34 "lu'o and lu'e are very...no number comes between them...and the throng of women kissing me(!) as lei pano ninmu cu cinba mi." Should this be "lei ninmu cu cinba mi." ? johnatl
    • "mi se slabu vopanu...": "se" has not been introduced at this point, so it causes confusion
    • Answer to exercise 3.8: "le la ROZmeris. cifnu cu batci...". Nowhere is it explained explicitly that articles can (and should, when necessary) be nested like this, so I found it very confusing to read "le la (anything)". In retrospect it's obvious... but it still warrants a brief note.


How does xorlo change chapter 4 and its examples?

    • existing phrase -> proposed = definition
    • ci le gerku -> ci lo gerku = three dogs
    • le ci gerku -> lo ci gerku = the three dogs
    • le pano ninmu cu cinba mi could become lo
    • And so on for any le that is meant to be general
    • no lo ninmu cu nelci la bil. -> su'e no lo (ro) ninmu cu nelci la bil. = at most zero (of all) women like bill?


The section introducing lo vs. le needs to be replaced...

What do we do, though, if we just want to say "three dogs"? For this we need another article, lo. The logic of lo is pretty complicated, but it basically means 'something which really is,' which nine times out of ten is the same as English a or some. (Translating Lojban grammar into English like this is a mortal sin — damned under the name of malglico; but even so, this is the best thing to do with lo at this stage!)


Note for logicians: lo prenu cu klama expresses the proposition "There exists at least one person, such that that person goes."

By contrast, the cannot mean the same thing as lo. In English, the dog doesn't mean just 'something which really is a dog', but more like 'something which really is a dog, and which I already have in mind.' (That's how "A dog came in. A dog was black" and "A dog came in. The dog was black" are different.) Lojban sidesteps this problem by using le gerku 'something which I'm going to call a dog'. It's up to the audience to put together what the speaker had in mind when they called it le gerku, just as it is the audience's job in English to work out what dog the speaker had in mind.

So ci lo gerku means 'three of those which really are dogs', or in plain words, 'three dogs'. lo ci gerku, however, means that we are talking about one or more of the only three dogs in the world, which is not something you'd really want to say. (Mathematicians and logicians can look up the relevant parts of The Complete Lojban Language if they want clarification on this issue — or for that matter on the differences between lo and le.)


Probably with some information about the generality of lo but that it also deals in 'real' things where le deals with conceptual things. Also the section at the end of the first page can be changed/removed...

For advanced students only: Once you have been involved with Lojban for a while, you will notice that you will see loi a lot, and lu'o lo hardly ever. In fact, by default the expression loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno, without a number, implies that all of mankind was somehow involved in carrying the piano. Strictly speaking, that's true (if three men carried the piano, then Man carried the piano.) But it's not really the most specific way of expressing what's going on.

So how do you get the number 'three' back into an expression like loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno? You cannot say loi ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno, because that means that there are only three men that exist in the universe. You cannot say ci loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno, because the three men act as one mass, and not as three masses. As it turns out (by extension of a little-known mechanism documented in The Complete Lojban Language, pp. 132–133), the way to do it is loi ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno: "The mass of three out of all men carries the piano."


Loi now means just a group of some (actual) men without any universal implications. Using xorlo "loi ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno" now means just "a group containing three men carries a piano".

The section at the begining of page two talking about re lo ci prenu and re lo ci mensi pe mi needs to be changed (re lo ci prenu means two of the three real people i'm talking about).

In the summary...

...My personal advice (not official Lojban policy!) is when in doubt, use le. This is because the only time le is completely wrong is with a cmene (which needs la, of course). If you use le where another article would be more appropriate, you may not express yourself as clearly as you wanted, but at least you will not be talking ungrammatical nonsense...


I think official policy is to use the least specific, which is now lo.

For referance see How to use xorlo

Created by eyeonus. Last Modification: Tuesday 22 of March, 2011 18:03:36 GMT by johanp.
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