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Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 13:49:50 -0300
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?= <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban] Re: Un-definite quantifier.
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On 6/13/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Almost certainly, for
> example, {lo pavyseljirna cu pavyseljirna} is
> true in this way as a general claim, even when
> there are no unicorns; 

When there are no unicorns where? 

The claim can be true when there are no unicorns in the real
(physical) world because it almost certainly is not a claim about
the real world.

{lo namcu cu namcu}, "numbers are numbers" is also true
even though there are no numbers in the physical world,
because it is clear that {lo namcu} does not refer to a 
physical object.

It is very hard to think of any case in which {lo broda cu broda}
would be false for any broda. At worse it would be meaningless
{lo fugza cu fugza} if "fugza" is a meaningless word, but even 
then I would tend to think it is true but I just don't know what
fugzas are.

> Quantified {lo broda} expressions, on the other
> hand, are directly about brodas and so require
> that there be some brodas to be true (well,
> subject to a lot of conditions about scopes of
> negations and the like). 

Quantifiers need not range over physical objects though.
For example {ro namcu cu namcu}, "each number is a 
number", or {ro selbri cu selbri}, "each relation is a relation",
are true, and so would {ro pavyseljirna cu pavyseljirna} in 
any context I can think of.

The fact that {lo broda}
> without quantifiers (and with internal
> quantifiers) behaves so differently from {le
> broda} is one objection to xorlo, the claim being
> that absolutely nothing is gained by the
> complication invloved.

{lo broda} without quantifiers behaves just as {le broda}
withouth quantifiers, and indeed like any other sumti without
quantifiers. With quantifiers too. For any sumti, we have:

PA <sumti> = PA da poi ke'a me <sumti> 

mu'o mi'e xorxes