History: lo

Source of version: 1 (current)

{lo} has the longest and most complex history of all the problematic gadri. Originally it contrasted with {le} both by being unspecified and by being veridical; that is, it was an unspecified object that really had the property attributed. Like all Loglan/Lojban descriptors it was early pluralized, to cover all members of some unspecified group of object with the mentioned attribute. In this role, the nature of the grouping was also left unspecified, so that, in different contexts it might have been used for distributive, collective, cumulative, generic, or ways for which we do not even have names. Gradually, these have been separated: sets first, then most of the rest together (as {loi}), leaving only the distributive group sense with {lo}. The present plan, based on the SAE model, is to restore the generic sense to unquantified {lo}, while keeping the distributive sense for quantified {lo}, which was always officially quantified anyhow. That is, {Q(lo) broda} will continue to function as before (without the collapse of {su'o (lo) broda} to {lo broda}), while {lo broda} itself refers to the Kind of brodas, an object which inherits the properties of each individual broda, real or not (its avatars). In practice, each occurrence of {lo broda} -- as such or as anaphorized -- picks up properties of another avatar and attributes them to the brodakind.