[lojban] Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: About the negators

["Daniel Brockman" <daniel@gointeractive.se>]

>> Suffice it to say that while the use of na is
>> well-defined in simple bridi, its meaning in very complicated sentence with
>> both existential qualifiers and bridi tails is not well-defined.
>
> If {su'o da na broda gi'e brode} counts as a "very complicated
> sentence", then the characterization of Lojban as "spoken predicate
> logic" is almost a sham. The relative scopes of quantifiers, logical
> connectives and negation should be very straightforward.

Spontaneous thoughts: Since {su'o da broda gi'e na brode} ought (?) to
mean {su'o da broda gi'e nai brode}, then {su'o da na broda gi'e brode}
ought to mean {su'o da broda na gi'e brode}.

That would be consistent with e.g. {su'o da ca broda gi'e brode}
meaning {su'o da ca broda .i je da brode} (which I assume it does?).

Of course the scoping of {na} is a controversial issue; I'm just thinking
out loud and I haven't followed the discussion on lojban-beginners.

One can always say {su'o da na ge broda gi brode} to mean the other thing.

-- 
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.se


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