loi stedu be lo'e remna (was Re: quantifiers on sumti)

["Dylan P. Thurston" <dpt@math.harvard.edu>]

mi cusku di'e
> > I think the issue really is what counts as identity here.  I would say
> > the typical human has one head, the typical head; but I would also
> > allow a name for a particular head to be used transparently to name
> > the typical head in this context.

la xorxes. cusku di'e
> I don't understand what you mean. If you accept {ta stedu lo'e remna}
> and {ti stedu lo'e remna}, where {ti} and {ta} refer to different
> things, then you have to accept that {su'oreda stedu lo'e remna}.

Let me try rephrasing this.  In And's terminology, {lo'e remna} is the
myopic singular.  That is, it's only thought of as one person; so all the
various {ti} and {ta}s referring to what you probably think of as
different heads actually all refer to the single head of the single
person.

Again, it's a question of what makes heads different.  Because {lo'e
remna} signals that we're considering there to be only one human, the
mere fact that two heads are attached to what would ordinarily be
considered two different humans is not enough to make the heads
different.

Or anyway, that's the way I'd expect it to be used.  Is this what's
intended?  Is this how it's done in natural languages?  In any case, I
suspect it's a lot easier to use than it is to figure out.

> > Does this make sense?  I'm trying to relate this to more ordinary
> > problems--a single object can well have more than one name, so a
> > sentence like {ro da broda} could well be completed in several ways.
>
> What is the cardinality of {lo'i stedu be lo'e remna}? I understand
> it to be the set of human heads.

Yes; it's the set of all human heads, which has exactly one element.
There's a rather unusual way of counting here. (In defense of this, I
suspect it's more difficult than one might think to count such things in
the ordinary way, as in the ship example And brought u.)

Perhaps one way to say it is that {lo'e} gets lifted up so that {lo'i
stedu be lo'e remna} is essentially the same as {lo'e stedu be lo remna}.

> > In any case, I'd really, really, like {ro da cu stedu lo'e remna} to
> > be true.
>
> Everything is a human head ??????!!!!!!!!!

Gak, I must have been asleep.  That should be {pada cu stedu lo'e remna},
naturally.

> > (Are you saying {lo'e remna cu se stedu ro da} would be
> > true?)
>
> No, I'm not! Only human heads.

Repeat the question, with {ro} => {pa}.  I don't think you said that, but
I wasn't sure just where you stood.

> co'o mi'e xorxes

mu'o mi'e. dilyn.