Re: A couple of questions

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Iain (replying to Lojbab):
> You seem to be saying that {lo broda cu brode}, e.g
>  (1) {lo mlatu je nanmu cu blanu}
> could be true, even if there is
> no such thing as a cat-man ***in the universe of discourse***
> (far less the real world).  This doesn't make any sense to
> me whatsoever - I can't think of any interpretation of (1)
> which doesn't imply existence.

Without wanting to disagree with you, I can think of a possibly
valid interpretation that doesn't imply existence.
"ro mlatu je nanmu cu blanu" doesn't imply existence, & we
can gloss this as "100% of catmen are blue".
We might therefore take "lo mlatu je nanmu cu blanu" to mean
"more than 0% of catmen are blue", again not implying existence.

(Just to confuse matters, English universal quantifiers usually
imply existence, unlike Jbobau's or logic's.)

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And