IIRC 'zo'u' is a colon. It doesn't quantify anything; it= just separates the the prenex quantifiers from the body of the bridi. = ; It also serves to separate out out things one might want to put up front,= like topics (and, occasionally, temporals and spatials and a bunch of othe= r stuff to make some logical point)

The 'bu'a' series of variables = can't be moved inward (having something to move across is another job for '= zo'u') because there is no legal way to write 'ro bu'a' in the selbri slot = of a bridi -- and have any hope of getting all the other quantifiers coming= out clear (there are logical reasons as well as practical, such expression= s are moving up a level in expressions and mixing levels has to be done car= efully, if at all) But the, I don't quite know what you mean by indefinite descriptions involving predicate variables: 'lo bu'a'?
There= actually were an array of suggestions for dealing with "predicates as pred= icates" but since it was unclear what you wanted, it was hard to pick a sui= table one. Have you gotten clearer about that.
I also don't quite see wh= at all this has to do with self-reference, which generally is an evil thing= that all manner of problems in the 2oth cnetury and eventually provided th= e unwelcome solution that there was no solution to them.

<= br>

From: Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.= com>
To: lojban@goog= legroups.com
Sent: Fri,= December 3, 2010 3:32:33 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] zo'u is inconsistent

I've kind of wondered about zo'u myself with regards to this.

More interestingly for me though, what in the hell does "se xu" mean?=

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Ian John= son <blind= bravado@gmail.com> wrote:

{zo'u} works like= this if I understand correctly:

PA da PA de ... zo'u -> quantify= ing da de ...
PA bu'a PA bu'e ... zo'u -> quantifying bu'a bu'e ... <= br> <any other sumti> zo'u -> defining the topic in an imprecisely def= ined sense

In any case, you put a string of sumti before it. In one case, doing th= is quantifies over sumti. In another case, it quantifies over selbri. In st= ill another case, it doesn't quantify over ANYTHING.

.i la'e di'u .e= la'e di'u xi re na se nibli .i la'e lo'u ro da le'u .e la'e lo'u ro bu'a l= e'u cu sumti .i to se xu toi ni'ibo lo'u ro bu'a zo'u le'u cmacrkuantifi lo= 'i sumti .enai lo'i selbri

What is especially egregious is:
However, indefinite descriptions in= volving the bu'a-series cannot be imported from the prenex.=20 (CLL 16.13)

which to me sounds like "there's magic going on here= , so what happens every other time is forbidden in this specific case."
=
My general thought about this is that it's awkward because the language= doesn't have very strong self-referential tools for things like referring = to predicates as predicates. I asked recently about how to refer to "broda-= as-predicate" and was given {la'e zo broda}; I don't know if that's really = adequate for things like quantification over selbri variables and so on.
Any thoughts; disagreements, ideas for improvement, etc.?

mu'o m= i'e .latros.

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