Date:  Sun, 12 Oct 1997 15:16:26 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199710122016.PAA21037@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Subject:      Re: na`e
X-To:         lojban <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011
Content-Length: 1786
X-From-Space-Date: Sun Oct 12 15:16:27 1997
X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU

cu'u la djef
>> >> > (1)        su'o bu'a poi na vreta zo'u le mlatu cu bu'a le stizu
>> >> >              For some <X> which is not "vreta", the cat <X> the
chair.
 >> >> For "poi" read "cei", which makes everything fine.
>> Quantifiable pro-bridi are an abomination on the language.
>
>Ha, ha, ha! Okay. Would you like to explain that a little more? :)

They are essentially unworkable as soon as you add a little of
complexity. You can use, for example, {su'o mlatu} in a prenex,
to mean "at least one cat". But you can't use {su'o bu'a} to mean
 "at least one bu'a", because bu'a has a special rule for how it
works in the prenex. (The way I understand it, this contradicts
the claim of syntactic unambiguity. To keep that claim true bu'a
should be in a selmaho of its own, i.e. the parser should identify
it as a different thing than a normal selbri.) As for our example, does
it really work with cei? Is {su'o bu'a cei na vreta} "some <X> which is
not {vreta}", or does it mean "some <X> which is {na vreta}"?
I would have said the last one, but in any case, whichever it
is, how do we say the other?

>>Fortunately
>> they aren't needed. Here's a way of doing it with ordinary
quantification,
>> even if it does take a few more words:
>>
>>         su'o da su'o de poi na zo vreta zo'u
>>                 da de bridi le mlatu ku ce'o le stizu ije da jetnu
 >
>Ooh, I think I'd prefer the previous sentence for its conciseness.  This
>one is technically correct, but hideous. Fortunately for ordinary users, I
>don't think it should be necessary to express this particular concept to
>this level of precision in any case.

Of course. It's just nice for me to know that I could say it without
using bu'a. I don't know whether it can actually be said _with_ bu'a.

co'o mi'e xorxes