Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 10:10:32AM -0500, Jordan DeLong wrote:

> Furthermore, though the word order leads to different likely interpretation
> it doesn't change the possible meanings.
> 	ro da prami de
> Can mean "Everyone loves >=one other (the same) person" just as much as it
> can mean "Everyone loves someone (else)".

In fact it means neither: it means "Everyone loves some person(s), possibly
different person(s) for each or even themselves."  When sumti appear in a
bridi with no prenex, their scope is uniformly left-to-right.

Unless you mean that the Lojban statement is entailed by either English
sentence, which is certainly true.

> I was discussing this point with some people on IRC a while back, and
> bunk I say!  bunk!  Of course unicorns exist:  they're concepts.  

Not at all.  The concept of a unicorn is a concept, and it exists, just
as the concept of a horse exists.  Otherwise we are in the position of
saying that horses are animals, but unicorns are concepts, which is very ugly.

> I say {mi djica lenu lo pavyseljirna cu klama ti} there's nothing wrong
> with the bridi, as I really do desire that su'o lo ro pavyseljirna
> come (even if ro = 0; the su'o is just the number I'm wanting).

There *is* nothing wrong, because nu-events exist even if the things inside
don't.  But lo pavyseljirna cu blabi, "some unicorn is white", that's
rubbish.

> Additionally, certainly you can dream a unicorn klama do, as unicorns
> *do* exist in dreams.  With:
> 	da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi senva ledu'u da klama mi
> says "there is a unicorn such that I dreamt it came to me".  

That claim is false.  A true claim would be:

mi senva ledu'u lo pavyseljirna da klama mi

which puts the unicorn firmly inside the context of a proposition.

(Here comes Bernard J. Ortcutt, pillar of the community and possible spy.)

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders."
        --Hal Abelson