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Re: [lojban] More about quantifiers



In a message dated 3/14/2002 2:50:12 PM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:


> ><
> >     ro broda su'o brode cu brodi
> > =   no broda me'iro da poi brode cu brodi >
>
>I forget what my system is supposed by you to be.

The one you have been advocating: + for the {Q broda}
forms and - for the {Q da poi broda} forms.


Oh, that one!  But I ditched that a couple of days ago (I lose track of how long because of the high rate of messages).  I actually meant, what arrangement of + and - among AEIO.

<>But in any case, I don't
>quite follow the identity you propose:

You're right, I meant to start with {ro broda ro brode
cu brodi}. Sorry about that>

'Sall right.  You still haven't made enough of that kind of mistake to catch up with me.

<The universal/particular, positive/negative characteristics
can be changed while we retain the meaning of the sentence.
The import cannot be changed. That's why I asked what you
meant by "actual quantifier". There is no fixed quantifier
for a given meaning, but there is a fixed import.>

Interesting.  That is a useful thing to notice.  What it means in terms of the system I am currently proposing is that the import condition, whichever it is (but usually + ) is a presupposition, that is goes on the front of the sentence after all the other operations are done -- hence the ease of moving negations arount -- the move only in the matrix, not the prefix.

<You now seem to favour a system with + import for everything
though. At least that means we agree that {Q broda} is
equivalent to {Q da poi broda}.>

Yes, &'s comments on that seem to me totally compelling (and it is the system I wanted originally anyhow).  The equation has to ahve &'s caveats, though: if {Q broda} is a {Q da poi broda}, but not conversely.  But, if both are possible, they are equivalent.

<Well, at least I can take comfort in the fact that I am
not alone in my non-standardness. (I guess I was lucky that
doing a search in the web, the first definition I got for
"restricted quantification" was the one I was using.)>

I've found a couple of other places that use "restricted quantification" in this way, still mainly as a translation device (for which it works rather well, I find as I play with it -- shortens some steps in the procedure).  What I call "restricted quantification" still occurs with that name, but more of it seems to be under "many-sorted" or "many-sortal quantification."  When I started using the term, 30 years ago or so, the situation was different, because no one was using "restricted quantification" in the currently popular (apparently) way.