From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Mar 2 10:26:23 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 2 Mar 1993 10:26:19 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2777; Tue, 02 Mar 93 10:22:34 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2690; Tue, 02 Mar 93 10:28:19 EST Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 14:49:58 GMT Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: TECH: Goats' legs and counting To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Mon, 22 Feb 1993 10:18:02 -0500 <12330.9302221632@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Status: O Message-ID: > Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 10:18:02 -0500 > From: John Cowan > > The statement that "da broda" by no means excludes "de no na du da > cu broda". However, "re da poi brode cu broda" does exclude "ci da > poi brode cu broda". I used to argue against this, but a few days ago I came to the conclusion that John is right after all. My position was that {re da poi brode cu broda} could be interpreted as `there are two foos of which I want to say that they bar', which did not appear to be falsified by there being barring foos other than these two. If that be so, however, then {no da poi brode cu broda} ought to mean `there are no foos of which I want to say that they bar', not to be falsified by the actual existence of one or more barring foos, which I have chosen to leave without attention. Zero being exactly as good a number as any, if {re} implies {su'ore}, {no} has to imply {su'ono}. And this deprives us from our favourite method of expressing nonexistence. In light of the above, I henceforth take the precise quantifiers side in kanbytuple issues. Ivan