Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 10:15 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Tuesday, 2011-09-20 at 21:16 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>>
>>     ro klesi be lo gerku cu gerku
>>
>>     lo xanto cu bramau ro drata ke tumla danlu
>>
>>     lo remna cu se tuple re da
>
> I would say that they are false.
>
> For the first, I don't think that's a problem.

The first was kind of beside the point anyway. Presumably you would
still allow "ro klesi" in other contexts, such as "ro klesi cu klesi",
right? The problem with saying it is false is that if "lo blabi gerku
cu klesi lo gerku" is true, and "lo blabi gerku cu gerku" is also
true, it's hard to say why at least "su'o klesi be lo gerku cu gerku"
would not be true.

> For the third: it could be replaced by {lo remna cu ckaji lo ka se tuple
> re da}, or by a tanru - {lo remna cu re mei se tuple} - or by an
> explicit generic quantifier, which {so'e} arguably is: {so'e remna cu se
> tuple re da}.

It could. So in your system "lo du'u ko'a ckaji lo ka broda na nibli
lo du'u ko'a broda" is true, right?

> The second is toughest, and a good demonstration of the power of
> kind-quantification, but since it is in the end a case of generics,
> I think it can be handled similarly:
> {so'e xanto cu bramau so'e tumla danlu poi na xanto}

> Correction: just using {so'e} isn't really adequate for this purpose, of
> course, because default tense assumptions would have that making a claim
> only about the present world.
>
> Maybe this is where {lo'e} could come in.

With "lo'e" as "typical"? But the typical land animal is arguably an
insect, so I could say "lo'e smacu cu bramau lo'e drata ke tumla
danlu". With some other sense of typical I might judge the typical
land animal to be some kind of cervid, but maybe that's just me. It
still wouldn't capture what I want to say about elephants though.

> That doesn't help with a pure kind predication, though. For that, e.g.
> "I like all animal species", you'd have to be explicit about the kind
> predication:
> {mi nelci ro ka danlu ma kau}
>
> (assuming {ka} and qkau work so as to make that work)

Would you really be happy with "so'i ka danlu cu se krasi lo
frikygu'e"? I think properties are things like propositions or
numbers. perhaps you may like them, de gustibus non est disputandum,
but I can't really say of them the kind of things we say of physical
things.

> In general, it seems to me that kind predications resolve as one of
> * existential quantification
> * generic quantification
> * property predication
>
> {lo broda} might allow you to be ambiguous between the three, but for
> complicated sentences you'd have to say what you mean.
>
> Is that so bad?

So you don't really buy into the Carlson-Chierchia non-ambiguity
thesis. You favor what Chierchia calls "the A-approach".

For me that approach is unsatisfying, but that wouldn't matter if we
come to the same result about the meaning of sentences. At this point
we seem to have different results for at least some cases.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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