Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 21:42:57 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711160242.VAA00119@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Pycyn@AOL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: "John E. Clifford" Subject: Re: `at least one ' vrs `one or more' X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2596 X-From-Space-Date: Sat Nov 15 21:43:03 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU bob: >I know there is a tendency to handle {lo} so sentences come out as >examples of textbook logic. Sorry, but this is the LOGICAL language and that means (among other things) that the sentences DO come out as examples of textbook logic. Further, it means that all structural transformations are formal, that is they do not depend upond what particular words are involved, but only upon the grammatical classes. Since _viska_ and _nelci_ belong to the same class, basic predicates (the "basic" is not important here), the logical transformations around them are exactly the same. That is, _lo mlatu_ is equivalent to _da poi mlatu_ inside the scope of _na_, which can be fronted as _ro da poi mlatu_, i.e., "for every cat x, it is not the case that I like x." No exceptions to any of the rules of transformation involved here. Alas, it is not so in English, where -- as I noted in another context -- structures can be ambiguous, i.e., contradictory transformations may be applied to the surface (which reflect underlying differences, of course). As noted on this thread, stress and the like -- missing in print -- helps disambiguate but is not perfect. It happens (alas) that scopes are one of the areas where this sort of thing happens most often: as witness the first homework in a moderately thorough logic class. Here the problem is just whether the "one or more" or "at least one" is or is not in the scope of the negation. It may be that in bob's idiolect these two expressions are consistently different on this issue (as, for example, "any" is consistently in my idiolect --and most Americans' at least -- a universal that is outside the scope of an apparently governing negation: "I don't like any cats" = "for every cat x, it is not the case that I like x." My idiolect also allows "(a) certain" to function similarly for particulars, "I don't like certain cats" = "there is at least one cat x such that it is not the case I like x.") They are not consistently different in my idiolect. To me, then, bob's arguments seem merely to be bogged down in the ambiguities of English (why we have Lojban, for one) and, if he is right about one meaning of the English version, it simply is not a good translation of the Lojban. Lojban doesn't (I am pretty sure I lost this one) have any such context-leapers, so a quantifier (even an invisible one) is always inside the scope of the governing negation (etc.) to'e nelci -- or its compounded form (it that possible?) -- is better for dislike than the na'e or na forms, for the reasons stated somewhere down this thread. >|83 pc