From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Thu Nov  3 05:51:16 1994
Message-Id: <199411031051.AA19801@nfs1.digex.net>
Date: Thu Nov 3 05:51:16 1994
From: i.alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk
Subject:      Re: some definitions
Status: RO

la pycyn. cusku di'e

> But the Lojban does not work, since _lo_tanxe_ is, by its form, not a
> quantifier expression at all, but a singular term -- a candidate for
> replacing, not for being replaced in instantiation.
...
> But then _lo_broda_ clearly lies on the specific side.  It looks like a
> de- scription and that counts for something in a logical language.

You obviously have clear ideas of what constitutes a description,
and of what a description means, which are not totally familiar to
many of the rest of us.  I need to read this again (and again :)
and think about it some more, but let me just ask one question -
where does

    su'o broda
    at-least[-one] thingummy

fit in?  Does it 'look like' a description or a quantification?
Is it equivalent to {lo broda}, as I have long assumed?
(I own up - it's actually three questions :-)

The above is the important bit - what follows is just thinking aloud.

...
> And, of course, _lo_ binds no variable, even
> implicitly, as a quantifier does.
I'm not sure what you mean by "implicitly" here.  I consider a quantifier
to bind its variable explicitly.  I have espoused the view that {lo} binds an
invisible variable which can be later referred to using {le}, a position
which resembles the Karttunen concept.

mu'o mi'e .i,n.