Return-Path: <@SEGATE.SUNET.SE:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET> Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0sSJLk-0000YjC; Sun, 2 Jul 95 10:21 EET DST Message-Id: Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id 7194FD6A ; Sun, 2 Jul 1995 9:19:49 +0200 Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 03:19:28 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ci stedu, and a new dumb idea on quantifiers for people to tear up X-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 1911 Lines: 40 >> Advantages of all this: >> >> 1) It reduces all explicit quantifiers on lo/indefinites to either >> "pa/piro" or "ro" as the outermost quantifier, which I think removes the >> scope/order question. > >Not completely. I hope you agree that {ro lo prenu cu prami lo prenu} means >something different than {lo prenu cu se prami ro lo prenu}. I assume you mean "pa prenu" vs. "lo prenu" if you are even TRYING to get a straight answer out of me. But even that won;t work, because at this point, I haven't the vaguest idea what anything means that involves "lo" since there are so many conflicting conventions apparetnly in use in the community in the wake of the last year's debate - that is why I call the whole mess the "any" problem. "lo" hhas become an almost perfectly meaningless article to me in the wake of the debates and I am pretty sure that any stand I take will have some perfectly valid counterstand taken by you or someone else. If you had asked the question a year ago and logical scope of quantifiers was not mentioned as an issue, then I would have said that {ro lo prenu cu prami lo prenu} and {lo prenu cu se prami ro lo prenu} are identical becuase of the symmetry of conversion, and because there are no explicit bound variables. ONLY when there was an explicit prenex, use of "da-series" that implied an explicit prenex, or use of "naku" instead of "na" would I have conceived that there was any non-symmetry in a conversion - SE to be acts like "na" at the predicate level and thus supersedes all scope. Tonight, I simply throw out ideas and let all you people who didn't flunk logic class tear them up - the moment a discussion turns to a logical issue, i defer to pc, and try to extract from HIM whatthe simplest straight answer tolerated by logic would be. (By saying "simplest" I sometimes have hopes of getting pc to actually take a moderately unambiguous stand %^) lojbab