From cowan@ccil.org Tue Oct 19 08:42:48 1999
X-Digest-Num: 260
Message-ID: <44114.260.1393.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 11:42:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Re: 3 dogs, 2 men, many arguments
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1393

xod scripsit:
> 
> From: xod <xod@bway.net>
> 
> I take issue with Chapter 16, section 7: Grouping of Quantifiers.
> 
> http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojftp/reference-grammar/chap16.html#s7
> 
> The meaning of "ci gerku cu batci re nanmu" is taken to mean "each of
> three dogs bite two men", leaving the number of men not necessarily 2
> but any value between and including 2 and 6. The result is that the 2 is
> taken less literally than the 3 because it is declared later.

Not less literally, merely as a matter of distribution. 
Quantifiers are implicitly understood left to right, which is a bias
in favor of the direction of the Latin alphabet, not in favor of
English particularly.  For each dog, there are two men bitten;
the two men must be distinct from each other, or they would be only
one man, but nothing is said about whether the two men are the same
or different from those bitten by other dogs.


> The statement "da broda de" should, by default, be symmetrical between da
> and de.

No, because it means su'oda su'ode zo'u da broda de, and the order
of quantifiers matters.  "For at least one X, there exists at least one
Y such that X bites Y."

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin