Message-Id: <m0sOrui-0000YjC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Thu, 22 Jun 1995 15:25:58 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: pc answers
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2972
Lines: 69

pc:
>         To wander somewhat off the point, I have noted that in logic
> quantifiers and descriptors have little to do with one another.

Could you give a couple of examples of the logic of descriptors?
>From what you say, I don't really recognize what they are.

>  If all
> descriptors are just quantifiers, then we have no way to refer to objects
> in their absence.

Why not? Say I want to refer to my book in its absence. Then I can use
{le mi cukta}, which is {ro le mi cukta}, each of my relevant books, in
this case there is only one, so just my book. What's wrong with that
to refer to absent objects?

> Even the person I just called djan to his face becomes merely "there
> is an x which I have in mind to call djan such that" when I try to talk
> about him.

I don't think names work like that. To me, {la djan klama} means the
one named John goes. It doesn't just say "there is an x that I call John
who goes", because it assumes that the listener knows (or can find
out, or could ask) what is the referent of {la djan}.

>         But the quantifier=descriptor system as it is laid out is also
> incoherent.  We are told that _ci_gerku_ just is _ci_lo_gerku_, which just
> is _ci_lo_so'u_gerku_.

The last one should be {ci lo ro gerku}, but it doesn't really change
things that much, assuming there are not many empty predicates.

> From which we can infer that that just is
> _ci_lo_so'u_lo_gerku_ which just is _ci_lo_so'u_lo_so'u_gerku_.

Those are not equivalent. {ci [lo] gerku} is "three dogs".
{ci lo su'o lo gerku} is "three of some dogs". Maybe in the case
of {lo} this doesn't really make much difference, but it is not
an automatic expansion.

> And so
> on.  And, in the other direction, _ro_lo_ci_lo_nanmu_ just is ultimately
> _ro_ci_nanmu_, which, if not ungrammatical, is at least not very sensible.

This doesn't really follow. {lo} can only be dropped when there is no inner
quantifier. {ci nanmu} is a shorthand notation, nothing more. It is by
definition {ci lo nanmu}, but this doesn't mean that {ci lo} can always
be replaced by {ci} in every position that it appears. It usually can't.

> And if that is not wrong, what about _roda_poi_cide_poi_nanmu_ (or even
> _cida_), which is also what the original expression is said to just be?

No, it is not that. Inner quantifiers cannot be expressed in any easy
way in terms of {da}.

{ro da poi ci de poi nanmu} means "every x for which three y which are
men...} and we are still waiting for the selbri that goes with the
first {poi}.

>         I take it that those special cases where quantifiers and
> descriptors can be used to describe the same situation in fairly obviously
> related ways have been generalized to the claim that correspondingly
> parallel sentences involving the two types of expressions will always
> describe the same situations.

Can you give examples where descriptors are used without the corresponding
quantifiers? I don't really see what you mean.

Jorge