Message-Id: <m0sSRa2-0000YjC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sun, 2 Jul 1995 12:06:47 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: ci stedu,
              and a new dumb idea on quantifiers for people to tear up
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2519
Lines: 53

> >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.

No, I did mean {lo prenu}: "Every person loves some person" versus
"Some person is loved by every person". But it works just as well
with {pa prenu}, although the claims are more bizarre: "Every person
loves exactly one person" vs "Exactly one person is loved by every
person".

> 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

What conventions? Can you explain any one of the conventions that are
different from {lo prenu} = {da poi prenu}? You have always said that
they don't mean the same but you have never explained the supposed
difference. At least I don't remember anyone ever explaining the difference.

>- 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.

Well, but at least we would know what to argue against. If all you say
is that {lo} means something else but you don't say what it means, that
doesn't help much.

> 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.

Identical with which of the two meanings? Or are they identical and
ambiguous? The English literal translations are both ambiguous, although
at least one tends to one of the meanings and the other tends to the other.

> 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 %^)

There is nothing complicated about {lo prenu} = {da poi prenu}. I can't
think of anything that would be simpler.

Jorge