From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:44:51 2010 Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 18:28:07 +0100 Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: Re: ci cribe To: Bob LeChevalier In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sun, 07 May 95 18:19:10 EDT.) X-From-Space-Date: Mon May 8 18:28:07 1995 X-From-Space-Address: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Message-ID: > The question was how to interpret: > le ci cribe cu batci ri > It could either be "each of the three bears bites itself", or > "each of the three bears bites each of the three bears". > I think it should be the first. The argument would be that to > identify what is the referent of {ri}, one should look at the > prenex form of the sentence: > ro da voi cribe zo'u: da batci ri > For each x that I'm calling a bear: x bites x. That makes the most sense. > To get the second meaning, I would say: > le ci cribe cu batci rori This doesn't make much sense to me. It seems to me to mean "Each of the three bears bit each of itself" - daft. > In this case, the prenex form would be: > ro da voi cribe ku'o ro de voi cribe zo'u: da batci de > For each x of what I'm calling bears, for each y of what > I'm calling bears: x bites y. Right. And it would be nice to have a logically coherent and not too cumbersome way to say it. > A more common way of speaking would probably be: > lei ci cribe cu batci ri > The three bears bite themselves. "bear bit itself", "a bear threesome bit itself". It's not really a satisfactory way of saying "each of the bears bit each of the bears". ---- And