Re: [bpfk] {ro}, existential import and De Morgan

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 10:09 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:

If I may dare to presume to venture to second-guess xorxes, I think he might view the EI as presupposed, in which case {ro da poi klama cu pavyseljirna} would have a truth value only when {su'o da klama} is true. 

Given the four forms:

(1) ro lo broda cu brode

(2) ro broda cu brode

(3) ro da poi broda cu brode

(4) ro da ga nai broda gi brode

I think most people would agree that (1) presupposes that there are brodas and (4) doesn't, and that (2) and (3) are equivalent to each other. In the absence of brodas (4) is true and (1) is meaningless. 

I would strongly disagree that any of these sentences is false in the absence of brodas. Whether (2) and (3) are vacuously true or meaningless doesn't seem to matter much, because in practice we don't quantify over empty domains. I'm not sure if this is due to strict presupposition or just Gricean good manners.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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