Hello everyone.
I have recently got acquainted with the (virtually accepted, AFAIK) xorlo proposal:
There are several things I don't understand about it. Foremost, we now have that
- Any term without an explicit outer quantifier is a constant, i.e. not a quantified term. This means that it refers to one or more individuals, and changing the order in which the constant term appears with respect to a negation or with respect to a quantified term will not change the meaning of the sentence. A constant is something that always keeps the same referent or referents. For example {lo broda} always refers to brodas. In {mu da poi broda zo'u da brode}, "da" is a quantified variable, bound by the quantifier mu, and it takes its values from the set of all things that broda. (Within the scope of the quantifier, it acts as a constant term, but it cannot escape as a constant out of that scope.) Any term with a quantifier in front takes values from the set of things over which the quantifier runs. When an unquantified term is quantified, the quantifier runs over the referents of the unquantified term.
I don't quite understand how can all such terms be constants. For instance, consider the jufra
lo mu nanmu cu tavla lo ci ninmu
Under xorlo, lo mu nanmu refers to some 5 men/boys and lo ci ninmu refers to some 3 women/girls. However, which men speak to which men? Before xorlo, the default outer quantifier of lo was su'o thus the above would implied that at least one of the men talks to at least one of the women. Of course, before xorlo that would also mean that only 5 men exist in the universe and only 3 women. Similarly, before xorlo
le mu nanmu cu tavla le ci ninmu
meant that all of the men talk to all of the women, since the default outer quantifier of le was ro. What happens under xorlo? Do both phrases mean "all"? "at least one"? Or is it context defendant, and the phrases could mean anything? The later possibility suggests that the weakest interpretation is safest, namely the interpretation with "at least one".
In other words, since we're doing about 5 men and 3 women rather than 1 man and 1 woman, it seems that a quantifier is logically necessary, and such a term cannot be a "constant".
Secondly, what is meant by lo becoming "generic"? What is the difference from the earlier convention?
Many thx for any help!
Best regards,
Squark