Re: pc answers

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

And:
> >        ro lo ci lo nanmu cu pencu ro lo ci lo gerku
> >        Each of three of all men touch each of three of all dogs.
>
> I don't get that as necessarily distinct from pc's second reading.
> That is, why should it be
>
>   There's a cimei of men, and there's a cimei of dogs, such that
>   each member of the man cimei touches each member of the dog
>   cimei
>
> rather than
>
>   There's a cimei of men, such that for each m, m a member of the
>   man cimei, there's a cimei of dogs, such that m touches each
>   member of the dog cimei
> ?

Yes, it could be defined either way. I was thinking that the outer
quantifiers are nested in order of appearance and the inner ones
are independent. This seems to make sense to me, and allows
relatively simple forms for both the three dog and the nine dog
cases.

> I recall you saying that the solution was something approximately
> resembling
>
>   ci da poi nanmu e ci de poi gerku zohu da pencu de

I still think that works well, too.

> I find that a better solution, but since it requires forethought,
> and since I agree with pc that everything should have an alternative
> afterthought mode of expression, I also think that pc is right
> to think that a new cmavo might be useful to signal parallel
> scope, i.e.
>
>    Ev, v a cimei, Ew, w a cimei, Ax, x in v, Ay, y in w: x pencu y
>
> instead of what we seem to be agreeing should be the default:
>
>    Ev, v a cimei, Ax, x in v: Ew, w a cimei, Ay, y in w: x pencu y

Just as a reminder, these violate the goatleg rule. They would be
the two possibilities for {su'oci remna cu pencu su'oci gerku}.
The goatleg rule complicates matters somewhat. On top of the
existence of the cimei, uniqueness is also needed. But this is another
issue, mostly orthogonal to the one we are discussing.

> The new cmavo would signal that that the second existential quantifier
> precedes the first universal quantifier, or, in different words, that
> the existential quantifier (for the mei) in the sumti marked by that
> cmavo scopes before the last universal quantifier (for the cmima) in
> the logical form so far.

I'm not 100% against, but I don't know. I would have to see how the
actual cmavo works in different sentences, what happens when there
is a third quantification, and so on.

> I would like to add that I think these afterthought cmavo should be
> adopted as part of a more general programme to provide general purpose
> methods of afterthought scope. I get the impression that Loglan was
> created with much thought given to predicate-argument structure and
> very little to quantifier scope. One of the lessons I've learnt from
> Lojban is that these are the two (& possibly the only two) most
> important jobs syntax must have (though it can shirk them), and the
> structures required for each are pretty much independent of each other.

It would certainly be interesting to work out what is or is not missing
in this respect. Do you have any ideas about a general scheme? I agree
that adding cmavo to patch this or that problem is not a great way to
go about it.

Jorge