Message-Id: <m0qlQjE-00005LC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Thu, 15 Sep 1994 15:01:46 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: TECH: RE: do djica loi ckafi je'i tcati
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2395
Lines: 81

la and cusku di'e

> (A)
> Jorge:
> > Maybe what we need is a new quantifier "any" in selma'o PA.
> > Let's call it {xe'e}.
> >
> >         xe'eti ka'e se pilno
> >         Any of these will do.
> >
> >         mi na vecnu fo xe'eda
> >         I won't sell at any price. (But I may sell at some price :)
> >
> >         do ka'e cuxna paxe'e selska poi xekri
> >         You can choose any colour, as long as it is black.
>                                [^^ - do we have an anglophile here?]
>
> Wouldn't plain universal quantification suffice for these?
>  For every x, x is one of these, x will do
>                    a price, I won't sell at x
>                    a colour, you can choose x

The {ka'e} ones are tricky, because of the "innateness", so I would change
to {kakne} for those examples.

The difference between

        do kakne le nu cuxna ro selska
        You can choose every colour.

and

        do kakne le nu cuxna paxe'e selska
        You can choose any one colour.

is that in the first one you allow to choose more than one colour,
while in the second one you don't. Of course,

        do kakne le nu cuxna pa selska
        You can choose one colour.

makes you ask "which one?". (In this case black, but that was only to
confuse the issue even more.)

The selling example is confusing because of the negative, let's start
with
        mi vecnu fo xe'eda
        I sell at any price.

which obviously is not the same as

        mi vecnu fo roda
        I sell at every price.

so the negation of each of them is different.

> (B)
> My contribution to the needing a box, waiting for a taxi, seeking
> a unicorn debate is to suggest use of a NU cmavo meaning 'hypothetical
> event' - "xuhu", say. Then we could have:
>  I need it to be the case (though it might not be the case) that there
>   is x, x a box and I have x.

You can do this with the existing abstractions:

        mi nitcu le nu mi ponse lo tanxe
        I need the event that I possess a box.

in no way implies that "le nu mi ponse lo tanxe" should actually ever
be the case.

But I don't like solving it by kicking the problem into abstraction space.
We'd end up saying

        mi nitcu tu'a lo tanxe
        I need some abstraction about a box.

instead of saying what we really mean. Why should we make it so difficult
to make a distinction that can be made clearly in other languages?

Jorge