Re: some definitions

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

la pycyn cusku di'e

> But the Lojban does not work, since _lo_tanxe_ is, by its form, not a
> quantifier expression at all, but a singular term -- a candidate for
> replacing, not for being replaced in instantiation.

Here is the crux of our disagreement!

If I understand correctly your terms, I always thought {lo tanxe} was
a quantifier expression, not at all a singular term. Otherwise, its
default quantifier {su'o} = "at least one", makes no sense.

I don't see why we would want to have both {le} and {lo} as singular
terms, and no simple quantifier expression.

>  Anyhow, your specific/non-specific distinction sounds a
> lot like the general/singular one: quantifiers are inherently general or
> non-specific, the question of "Which one" has not been answered in
> principle; names and descriptions, singular expressions (though in
> Lojban the can refer to more than one thing), are inherently specific: the
> question has been settled in principle, even though we -- speaker and
> hearer -- may not know the answer.

Great, at least we now agree on the terms.

> But then _lo_broda_ clearly lies on the specific side.

How do you explain its default quantifier, in that case?

> It is
> historically just a correction to _le_broda_ to emphasize the correctness
> of the description ().
> Both have the inferences of a name, passing through negations
> and the like unchanged

But {lo} doesn't pass unchanged through negations!

> (indeed, what would be the dual of _lo_, related to
> it as "all" is to "some"?).

{naku lo broda} goes to {ro broda naku}. That is what the negation paper says.

{le broda} doesn't in general pass unchanged either, because its quantifier
is {ro}, but in 99.99% of the cases it is singular, {ro le pa broda}, and
so passes unchanged, because {su'o le pa broda}={ro le pa broda}.



> You can't have atemporal truth values and tenses in the same system, since
> it is the nature of a tensed sentence to be true sometimes - when in the
> appropriate relation to the event described, and false otherwise.

That's a matter of definitions. I say truth values are atemporal, but
utterances are not. You are saying that the utterance is atemporal, but
its truth value isn't.

> "It
> will rain"  is true, if at all, only up until the raining starts, then "It
> is raining"  comes true -- as it was not before.

Or, in my language: "It will rain" is true if at the future of the time
of the utterance it rains. I prefer to think that it is the utterance
that is associated with a time. The same words "It will rain" constitute
a new utterance if said again when it starts to rain.

> This won't get us
> into any (unsolvable) problems if we have a fixed notion of where pieces
> go.  I used to be sure that in Lojban the implicit order of "tenses" was
> modal temporal spatial negation.  Now I am not sure, nor do I remember
> what the device is for shifting them -- _ku_ maybe.

Yes, it can be done with {ku}, but not when they are directly attached to
the selbri. But are tenses singular terms, or quantified? I thought that
by themselves they were singular terms.

So, what does {mi na ba klama} mean?

1- It is false that at some future time I will go.
2- At some time in the future, it will be false that I go.
3- (My candidate) It is false that at the time in the future that
   I'm talking about I will go.
4- (=3) At the time in the future that I'm talking about, it will
   be false that I go.

3 and 4 correspond to taking tenses as singular, which seems the best
choice. In that case, they commute with negation. If they don't commute
with negation, we need some convention to interpret their order.

Jorge