[lojban-beginners] Re: Story time

[Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>]

--- Nora LeChevalier <noras@cox.net> wrote:
> At 04:39 AM 3/12/04 -0800, la xorxes wrote:
> 
> >Under the usual interpretation, the two negatives will cancel
> >and {noda viska node} would be equivalent to {roda viska su'ode},
> >"everybody saw something".
> >
> >To say that nobody saw anything you'd have to say {noda viska su'ode}
> >or {roda viska node}.
> 
> No, "noda" means "there are zero things (da) such that", so "noda viska 
> node" means "there are zero x's and zero y's such that x sees y".  I 
> thought it was a nifty way of saying "No one (yeah, sure) saw anything 
> (yeah, right)".

Hmmm...

The standard reading is:

There are zero x's such that there are zero y's such that x sees y.

In other words, no x is such that it sees no y's.

In other words, every x sees at least one y.

Having said that, I do prefer the "nobody saw nothing" reading, which
we called "coordinate scope" in a recent discussion. Here you can
find a lot of talk about this for those of you who are brave enough
and interested:

<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Discussion%3A+Three+dogs+attacked+four+men>

mu'o mi'e xorxes





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