In a message dated 2/26/2002 5:11:20 PM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:"all of all" does not add information, on the contrary, it loses Which hopefully nobody does (even you really). While "all" is arguable, "every," which is what {ro} means, clearly does have existential import. The question is "Of what?" When there is a variable present, on the range of the variables is guranteed non-empty, the restriction to a "subject term" does not guarantee that the subject term is non-empty. When there are no variables, then the subject term -- which now is part of the quantifier -- is guaranteed non-empty. The latter seems to be the case here. I know your counter argument involves moving negations back and forth over quantifiers, but from that point of view the quantifiers we have are seriously defective. The cheapest way to fix it would be to distinguish between quantifiers with and without variables, but in the natural way that leads to very odd things, like a free {da} without existential import -- or {lo} with the same problem. In any case, the basic idea is that negation transport changes from one class of quantifiers to the other. Since we have not distinguished (very throroughly), we could not specify the details before. |