From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199412051944.AA10272@access2.digex.net> Subject: Re: Cowan's summary #3: any old X at all Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 14:44:45 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199411200456.UAA09508@netcom3.netcom.com> from "Gerald Koenig" at Nov 19, 94 08:56:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24beta] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1177 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Dec 5 14:44:56 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab la djer. cusku di'e > John and others seem to agree that all the meaning in the English "any" > can be captured by a universal quantifier or an attitude marker. Not at all. Sometimes "any" is existential, not universal. > I disagree. Consider this meaning from my Webster's: > > "1: one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind: > 1a: one or another taken at random ." > > There are two anys here. One taken indiscriminately or some taken > indiscriminately. I want to consider the case of one taken > indiscriminately. It certainly cannot be expressed as "all". Neither is > it an just an attitude. We're talking about quantification here, namely > one something. Note, however, that the Webster example is an imperative! You wouldn't say in English "I asked any man I met." You would say "I asked a man that I met" (existential) or else "I asked every man that I met" (universal). The need for "any"s comes up when we have some kind of opaque context, including an imperative; invariably (I claim) this involves a subordinated abstraction clause. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.