From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Oct 13 09:21:30 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 13 Oct 1993 13:24:01 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 13 Oct 1993 13:23:39 -0400 Message-Id: <199310131723.AA00874@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5173; Wed, 13 Oct 93 13:21:46 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8190; Wed, 13 Oct 93 13:24:15 EDT Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 13:21:30 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu In-Reply-To: <199310131215.AA14092@access.digex.net> from "Iain Alexander" at Oct 13, 93 01:16:42 pm Status: RO X-Status: mi'e .djan. .i la .i,n. cusku di'e > Hang on! If an omitted sumti defaulted to {da}, then this sort > or reasoning might be relevant. But it doesn't, it defaults to {zo'e}, > whose quantification is indeterminate. Well, indeterminate up to a point. In general, it cannot be negative: "mi klama" cannot mean "mi klama noda", because that would undermine the usability of the ellipsized form. > "X is not blue" means > "There exists a Y such that X is not bluer than Y". Suppose I said > "X is not bluer than ko'a". If {ko'a} had been previously defined, > there would be no problem. If not, then I still see no reason to think > it's existentially quantified. And {zo'e} means whatever I want it > to mean. :-) My real point is that the difficulty persists whether you take the quantification to be existential or universal. There are always things that X is not bluer than, and it is never the case that there are no things that X is not bluer than, regardless of whether X is blue or not blue. Hmm, let's try that again: The sky is blue, but the sky is not bluer than a focal-blue color chip, which would justify "the sky is not blue" by assuming universal quantification; Leaves are not blue, but they are bluer than apples, which would justify "leaves are blue" by assuming existential quantification. Either way, an unfortunate result. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.