English, l= ike most languages, I suspect, has problems defining the scope of its quant= ifiers. This is the reason for a week in the middle o0f a formal logic cour= se about how to translate the the various English (or whatever) quantifier = expressions. Lojban, in trying to be a more "natural" language has in= herited this problem. The main problem for English seems to be the universa= l quantifiers "each, every, any and all". For the purposes of ordinay logic= , most of the differences here can be dealt with by determining the scope o= f the quantifier represented, the most complex rule being "'any' in the sco= pe of a negation or in the antecedent of a conditional is a particular if i= ts scope is limited to that part, but a universal over the larger sen= tence if the scope goes outside that part". This is followed by some practice exercises including, usually, "If any boy comes, the girls w= ill be happy" ("If there is an x such x is a boy and x comes then the girls= will be happy") and "I any boy comes, all the girls will dance with = him ("For all x, if x is a boy and x comes the all the girls will dance wit= h x") (the ambiguity of "all the girls' is in the next exercise).

The world and language tends to go beyond logic, h= owever, so that this limited advice does not help much. The scope of = quantifiers may well be beyond sentence boundaries: the second example abov= e might well continue "He will be wined and dined. He may even get lu= cky a couple of times." and so on. Or there may be no obvious scope: = "Get me a gun!" "Which one?" "Any one; just get me a goddam gun!". Here we might well read the "a" as "any" and note that comman= ds are another of those strange places where "any" follows its usual rule, = though here the scope is harder to determine and the results are less certa= in. Straightforwardly, we have "!there is an x, x is a gun and you get me x= ", but he move with negations and conditionals of moving the quantifier out= as a universal does not seem to work: "For every gun x, ! you get me x"&nb= sp; seems like a lot more orders than occurred. But maybe the surface= is misleading here: a question is logically the disjunctive set of its ans= wers; maybe a command is the disjunctive set of its obediences. Thus,= "you get me gun a" is a proper member of the command, and, hence, so is "F= or some gun x, you got me x", and als all the corresponding sentences about= guns b, c, .... But again, not "For all guns x, you get me x", since= that exceeds the order. We need to move beyond the set of obediences to the rule which built the set, rule into near worlds (as much= like this one as possible except for the defining characteristic) "If you = were to get me gun a, then the order would be obeyed" and so on, which can = now be summarized as either "If you were to get me some gun, the order woul= d be obeyed." or "For all guns x, if you were to get me x, the order would = be obeyed." (Whether the rules also requires "If the order were to be obeye= d, you would have got me some gun" -- but not the particular cases nor the = external universal -- is for another discussion.) In Lojban terms, {d= a'i}, even when invisible, creates one of special places for "any".&n= bsp; But as a practical matter, "any" is just a particular quantifier, unti= l the obviously extended scope (the real one, not the superficial) forces i= t up a level (or more) as a universal.

From: la gleki <gl= eki.is.my.name@gmail.com>
To:<= /span> lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 9:15 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "Any" and {ro}

On Friday, August 24, 2012 4:42:37 PM UTC+= 4, la .lindar. wrote:

C= LEARLY we must invent a new gismu for this!
I propose {bleni} because "= Blah!" for how you react to this suggestion, and then it also sounds like "= any".

On a more serious note, I think a clear-cut = PA would be very handy.

- Give me an apple?

- Which one? There are several in this basket.
- Any. I want to eat.
I think logic can't define the difference between "one of..." and "an= y". There for {xe'e} in PA would be strange.
What are your objections ag= ainst {su'a}?

{da} - some apple in the basket.
{da su'a} - any ap= ple in the basket.
{da su'anai} - some specific apple in the basket (e.g= . the yellow one).

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