RE: [jboske] Nixon Prenexes (was: fundamentalism as fundamental (RE: Re: gadriparadigm:2 excellent proposals

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

xod:
> On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> 
> > The formal semantics mainstream answer, since 1974, has been to allow
> > prenexes mid-sentence, whether there is an embedded proposition there or
> > not 
> 
> Can you show us, with an experimental cmavo "zo'u", what mid-sentence
> prenexes would look like? It sounds ghastly complex 

something like:

mi sisku zo'u'o da poi pavyseljirna zo'u'u da

where zo'u'o begins a mid-bridi prenes and zo'u'u ends it.

But just because it's easy to implement doesn't mean it's a good
thing. IMO, prenexes don't exist in underlying logic; quantifiers
are simply functions from propositions to propositions. So in

I know Ex broda(x)

the argument of 'know' is E (existential quantifier) and the
argument of E is 'broda'. So any predicate that takes a propositional
argument can take a quantifier as its argument, and any predicate
that can't take a propositional argument can't take a quantifier
as its argument.

So by my current thinking, the notion of bridi-medial prenexes
as distinct from an embedded proposition is nonsensical.

My thinking on these matters is hardly authoritative, but I
could not accept a solution that I did not understand the
underlying logic of.

--And.