Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:23:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710161923.OAA12223@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Problems with Abstraction X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1107 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Oct 16 14:23:10 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU John: > Lee Daniel Crocker (none) wrote: [Why (none)? Is that something your software does?] > > The refgram makes sense and is reasonably clear on this point, but I > > do see {ka} and {ni} used (by myself, too) as if there were a semi- > > implied {ce'u} or {makau} in the first omitted place. > > Perfectly OK. An omitted place means whatever the speaker intends > it to mean, and if the intent is to mean "ce'u", then that's what > it means. "ce'u" was put into the language to allow the existing > usage (omitted place) to be made explicit. 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. Also, is an omitted sumti understood as an unexpressed logical argument, or as an "unspoken word"? The latter wd be analogous to the way "ma" asks for a replacing word. --And