Message-Id: <199601160618.BAA05323@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Mon, 15 Jan 1996 20:00:36 -0800
Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      tech:logical matters
To:         lojban list <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 2644

&:
But for authority to keep its force it must remain distant & cloaked in
mystery. When the high priest comes under the gaze of the public he is
liable to be presumed fallible.
pc:
No presumptions necessary; I've screwed up enough to prove the
case. I take the rest to be conceding my point that I do not (perhaps
any longer) have any special clout.

&:
but maybe there are great virtues to restricted
quantification that I am failing to recognize
pc:
Let's see:
They are the quantifiers of natural language, the ones grammars are
designed to deal with (arguable for the universal, the particular,
finite numerals and the plurative -- though less in the last case; not
for the majoritive or any of the rest)
They give a unified treatment for all the quantifiers, even the ones
that do not fit with the unrestricted cases, even ones -- like "enough"
that do not fit with the cases that "do not fit," even the unrestricted
ones.  (Lojban, by the way, has a pretty good -- but far from
reasonably exhaustive list of these critters -- it could use a little
jazzing up)
They can fit most neatly into (Lojban's -- but most languages')
syntax, forming a unit that occupies the place of  an argument, rather
than a functionally fractionated and incomplete creature like the
standard logical correlate (a quantifier, a predicate, and half a
conditional)
The first and last of these can be dealt with in various ways, the
second provably cannot.  And this means that items with the same
grammar in Lojban have different logics, yet another blow (but this
is largely beating a dead horse) to the claim that Lojban is a logical
language: _su'o_ may be a modern unrestricted quantifier, but _so'e_
cannot be.
Notice that, if we were going to go for total concord, we would make
the easiest form, Q broda, the basic one and play around with all the
others for various purposes, as happens in most natural languages,
and insist that if people wanted to say weird things like non-
importing universals they would have to work for it (even go all the
awya to the logical form, with ganai gi).  But the bad habits of the
last few decades are too firmly entrenched to allow that now, so we
try to save as much as we can by ensuring a place for the central
notion in the thicket of peripheral special cases.

&:
But why should {suo no lo ro broda} mean that there are brodas?
pc:
Because the internal _ro_, properly understood, says that there are some
brodas, even if none of them do whatever the predication goes on to claim.
(Curiously, _no_ and however Lojban says "not-all" as restricted
quantifiers do not -- or need not -- have existential import.)
pc>|83