Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 12:03:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710171703.MAA26805@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Problems with Abstraction To: rk@prefer.net X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1851 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 17 12:04:02 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Ron Kuris says: > > Is it really that simple? Suppose you fill an omitted place with > > a variable bound by a quantifier. Can that quantifier than have > > any scope at all over the rest of the sentence? For example, > > can {mi na citka} mean "Not everything is eaten by me", or > > "Everything is uneaten by me"? It seems to me that in practise > > we restrict ourselves to a much narrower range of interpretations. > > I'm new at this, but it seems to me that {mi na citka} parses as: > > (mi { VAU}) > > which means: I don't eat. Does it, though? I would like it to, but it doesn't on certain accounts of sumti underspecification. It seems to me that either constraints must be placed on the possible interpretation of {zo`e} (at present the only such constraint is that {no da} is excluded}, or sentences with zo`e sumti will be susceptible to a huge array of conflicting and sometimes contradictory interpretations. It might be countered that because {zo`e} means "the understood sumti", it will only be used (explicitly or implicitly) when the addressee is perfectly aware how zo`e is interpreted, but the fact is that in the case of implicit zo`e this is untrue. In fact I think implicit zo`e is interpreted either as {ba`e ko`a} (i.e. specific) or as {da} with implicit existential quantification of maximally narrow scope. > I think the "everything" is unspecified > {zo'e}. > > If you want "I eat nothing at all", which I think is logically > equivalent to "Everything is uneaten by me", don't you need: > > mi citka noda > I eat nothing > > If you want "everything is not-eaten" then maybe: > > mi na citka roda > I not-eat each something > I don't eat everything That means "not everything is eaten by me; something is not eaten by me". To say everything is uneaten: mi citka ro da na ku, or {ro da zo`u mi na citka da}.