bits & pieces to Jorge on quantifiers

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> > I had been saying to Jorge that many intuitive uses of {re prenu}
> > in fact meant {ro lo re lo prenu}, so that it might be better to
> > have {re [lo] prenu} interpreted as {ro lo re lo prenu} and {lo
> > prenu} as {ro lo suo lo prenu}.
> I don't think this is really what you proposed. For example:
>        so'i prenu cu klama so'i stuzi
>        Many people go to many places.
> We want this to mean that for each of many people there are many
> places that they go. But your recipe gives:
>        ro lo so'i lo prenu cu klama ro lo so'i lo stuzi
>        Each of many people go to each of many places.
> Which is not the meaning we want. We want the second {so'i} to
> have scope within the scope of the first {ro}. So your talk of
> sets is more accurate.

Your English rendering is ambiguous between the meaning we do want
and the one we don't. (What we want is "For each of many people
there is a set of places such that for each place the person goes
to the place" - i.e., with scope as you say.)

Doesn't what my recipe gives make the second {sohi} have scope
within the first {ro}, given the left to right scope rule?

> > >This would mean that general quantifiers (almost anything except {ro}
> > >and {su'opa}), really hide one existential and one universal quantifier,
> > >rather than some indefinite number of existential ones.
> > I'm not sure even {suopa} should be exempt.
> It wouldn't matter. The rules for {su'opa} and {ro} are the same with
> both interpretations, the more complicated quantifiers are the ones
> that can be different.

I guess so. I don't yet see why you;re right, but you usually are,
& I can't find any counterexamples.

> > >               ci remna cu se tuple re tuple
> > >               3 people have 2 legs?
> > > vs.
> > >               re tuple cu tuple ci remna
> > >               2 legs are legs for 3 people?
> > First, doesn't the current goatleg ruling mean that these both mean
> > "there are exactly three people and exactly two legs such that
> > each leg is leg of each person"? So (a) both mean the same thing,
> > and (b) both are false.
> They both mean that under one interpretation. I don't want to call
> it the traditional interpretation because I'm not sure anyone ever
> gave this rule. There is nothing about this in the grammar papers.

The goatleg rule was stated by John very explicitly on this list
a couple of years ago, in, I think, a discussion with Nick.

> > Under the revised interpretation of quantifiers, the first one means
> > something perfectly normal - there exists a threesome of bipeds. The
> > second one means for each of a pair of legs there are three people
> > it's the leg of.
> No, you are giving the revised meanings of {su'oci remna cu se tuple
> re tuple} and of {su'ore tuple cu tuple ci remna}.

Right.

> Unless we want to throw out the goatleg rule with our revision, which
> I wouldn't really miss,

I don't like it from a logical point of view, but without it things
are harder to say. E.g. "Exactly three people left" must be something
like "There is a set of card 3 such that x in the set *iff* x is
prenu and x is cliva".

---
And