Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 14:56:05 -0500 (EST)
From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject: Re: mamta be ma
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
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And:
> > > > > How would you say "the mothers of Jorge and And"?
> > > > Perhaps {lei mamta be la xorxes a la and}.
> > > That could refer to just your mum.
> > Yes, you'd have to rely on the specificity of {lei}.
> I.e. an actually-nonveridical usage. I see.

No! A veridical usage: "The mass of those who are mothers of you or me."

You have to rely on the specificity to know that by the mass I mean 2
people and not just one, not all that unlikely, given that for one I
could just use {le} with the same effect. You could also say:
{lei re mamta be la xorxes a la and}.

If you want to be really drastic: {ro lo re mamta be la xorxes a la and}
(I'm assuming you have only one mamta, which need not be the case,
given the open nature of {mamta})

> > > Ax, x is a member of {Xorxe, And}: I met the mother of x.
> > >    I met lo mamta be xohu ro luha luhi la xorxes ce la and
>
> This is exactly the purpose of xohu [so named by me, but proposed by
> pc]. Normally as you work left to right through the sentence you add
> elements to the right end of the (implicit) prenex, so if X is after
> Y then X is within the scope of Y. But when you hit something marked
> with xohu you add it to the start of the implicit prenex instead.
> Neat, eh? That's how xohu works in general.

What I had understood before was that {xo'u} lets you jump from one
prenex (the one in the embedded clause) to another (the one in the
outside clause). Now you are using it for something different.

You are requiring that the {ro} be actually transported to the prenex,
and ignored in the body. This never happens. In general, if you explicitly
write the word {ro} in the body, you override the prenex, so

ro da su'o de zo'u de prami ro da
For every x, there is a y, such that y loves every x.

Is equivalent to:

de prami ro da
There is a y that loves every x.

The {roda} in the prenex is cancelled by the subsequent quantification.
(I may be wrong about this, but I think not.)

Jorge