Message-ID: <3427D636.52BD@locke.ccil.org> Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:46:14 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: na`e References: <199709230325.WAA22170@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1621 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Sep 23 10:46:14 1997 X-From-Space-Address: - JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > Lojban is not really well suited to handle quantification of selbri, > but something like this at least superficially works: > > (1) su'o bu'a poi na vreta zo'u le mlatu cu bu'a le stizu > For some which is not "vreta", the cat the chair. > > I think {su'o bu'a poi na vreta} really means something else, but > that's a different story which I'm not sure we want to get into. For "poi" read "cei", which makes everything fine. > In any case, in my opinion it is always true that: > > (2) ro da ro de so'i bu'a zo'u da bu'a de > For every x and every y, there are many such that x y. > > so that (1) is always true. Probably (2) is always true, though it is not a tautology. > Well, let's see: {na'e bo ko'a broda} should mean {ko'a na broda > ije da broda} = "ko'a is not a broda and there is some x such that > x is a broda". This is actually too weak: there has to be some *reasonable* connection between "ko'a" and "da"; i.e. they have to form two points on some intelligible (not merely logically possible) scale. "George is not (na'e) a horse, it is a democracy" is insensate. > [...] [S]omething sits on something, but it is > neither the cat nor on the chair. I agree with this, subject to the criterion of scalar reasonableness: perhaps the dog sits on the table. (Bad dog!) > But that would be inconsistent. Besides, there is no inner and outer na'e, > since it doesn't matter in which order you take them. I agree. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban