In a message dated 3/8/2002 10:02:24 AM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:But in my system the reference is the set of broda, whether empty Yes, {lo'i broda} can refer to the empty set, but then {lo broda} is a meaningless _expression_, since it presupposes that lo'i broda is not an empty set. Actually, the official line is that if lo'i broda is the empty set, the use of {lo broda} transports the discourse to being about an alternate world in which loi broda is not empty. <Then we're not in disagreement. That's all I have been claiming, that it is a consistent and convenient system. That's how I use Lojban. If you feel that this is too much of a deviation from real Lojban then you're welcome to say that I'm speaking a different language.> OK. You're speaking a different language. But doing it on a Lojban list and using a vocabulary that is almost identical to Lojban is very misleading and annoying. Since this not a monitored list, I don't suppose that you can be stopped from doing this. Nor do I think that anyone would want to, since, aside from an occasional aberration like this and main clause {kau}, what you write is some of the best Lojban around (even though it turns out on inspection not to be Lojban at all). <Could you explain how the domain quantified over is not always the one mentioned as subject? When is it not?> Well, the short answer is (surprise!) when the quantified _expression_ does not have existential import. But that is, in this context, circular and in any context not completely accurate. The longer answer is, when quantification is at some level attached to a representation of the unnamed universal class, rather than to a presentation of a subset. So, in particular, when Lojban has {ro da} the quantification is over the universal set, which {da} represents, not over whatever might come after it, which is the subject in English and Spanish (and...). We are, in these cases, talking about everything there is (in a perhaps conventionally restricted universe of discourse), as opposed to {ro lo broda} where we are just talking about brodas. (The exception about existential import is, of course, just about anything other than {ro} and something like {broda je brode}) BTW, I think I may have been overhasty in accepting some of your suggestions for expressions in the Lojban system, but that problem is minor compared to this one. |