Message-Id: <199509210759.DAA25045@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Thu, 21 Sep 1995 00:41:07 +0100
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      pc on ro
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

I think I probably fail in my struggles to understand pc, but here
goes, anyway:
>         When someone says in the ordinary course of events (well, not
> all that ordinary in this traditional example) "All unicorns are white,"
> the response "There aren't any unicorns" is neither intended nor
> understood as confirming the original claim.  It is a challenge to the
> original claim, a contrary claim to it, as much as "Some are blue" is.

There are plenty of occasions in normal English usage when _all/every_
is not given an interpretation where existence is implicated. Jorge has
already made this point, & I think someone else recently said that
when existence is implicated, this can be entrusted to pragmatics.

However, I wouldn't be averse to requiring {ro da broda [if] brode}
(I forget which GIhA it is). I'm all in favour of the syntax matching
the logical form as closely as possible.

> After reworking through the stages of the shift, I can find only one step
> which seems to me to be open to reconsideration.  That is the
> identification of _ro broda_ with _ro lo broda_.

What is the extent of this reconsideration? Does it apply to other
members of PA? How does it affect the {lo/lo/lohi} series, if {ro
broda} is no longer an abbreviation for {ro lo broda}?

> Unlike the existential import of _ro da poi broda_, which is central to
> Lojban as a language

Am I alone in not knowing that this is so?

---
And