From @uga.cc.uga.edu:lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Thu Jun 15 22:03:19 1995 Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA3416 ; Thu, 15 Jun 95 22:03:17 BST Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk via puntmail for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk; Thu, 15 Jun 95 00:42:56 GMT Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by punt2.demon.co.uk id aa07807; 15 Jun 95 1:41 +0100 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4765; Wed, 14 Jun 95 20:39:55 EDT Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 2107; Wed, 14 Jun 1995 19:32:21 -0400 Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 19:35:32 EDT Reply-To: jorge@phyast.pitt.edu Sender: Lojban list From: jorge@phyast.pitt.edu Subject: Re: pc answers X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Iain Alexander Message-ID: <9506150141.aa07807@punt2.demon.co.uk> Status: R pc: > Logical quantifiers are all also singular at heart, the apparently > plural ones, like "there are three...," are abbreviations whose behavior, > including instantiation, is governed by the underlying unabbreviated > complex . But what is the right underlying complex in Lojban? For example, how does re le prenu cu pencu re gerku Two of the people touch two dogs. Does this mean that 1- each of the two people touches two dogs, which may or may not be the same ones that the other person touches, or that 2- each of the two people touches each of the same two dogs? [On multiple quantification of the same variable:] > Subselection seems like the natural way to go. But, like the logic > system, the subselection supersedes the original selection, so that a > third quantifier is a subselection of the subselection, not of the > original selection, which is irretrievable. I agree with that. Otherwise, one has to keep in mind an unmanageable number of things about a given variable. > B. Typical/stereotypical/average. > Indeed, most philosophically inclined discssors of this issue have said > that _lo'e_ constructions have no meaning in isolation but only as part of > the whole sentence in which they occur I like that philosophy. In a given predication, I take {lo'e broda} not as another argument, but rather as modifying the selbri by reducing the number of arguments by one. Then the predication is not at all about {lo'e broda}. ta stedu lo'e remna is a one place predicate "... is a human head" applied to only one single argument {ta}. > (an argument against having them in > the universe) and _lo_stedu_be_lo'e_remna_ probably should share in that > contextualization I think rather that {lo stedu be lo'e remna} is simply something that satisfies the one place predicate "... is a human head". > (maybe what xorxes means by insisting that the head has > to be a _lo'e_ sort of thing, too, since it is not strictly a _lo'e_, as > noted above). I insisted that it would have to be a lo'e thing if it was true that {pa da stedu lo'e remna} i.e. one and only one thing satisfies the predicate. But I don't believe that that is true. > It might indeed be best not to get even that much of > concession and say simply _lo'e_remna_cu_pamei_ se_stedu_ rather than > introducing sumti at all. Well, I could ask {lo'e remna cu pamei se stedu ma}. What I proposed is to say {lo'e remna cu pavyselstedu}, where the lujvo stands for the one place predicate "... is one-headed". Jorge