[lojban] Re: "any John" -- is it possible to translate this?

[tijlan <jbotijlan@googlemail.com>]

On Apr 7, 5:41 pm, Jorge Llambías <jjllamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 11:25 AM, tijlan <jbotij...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> - la djon po'u ma
> >>> - ro da
>
> > I was aware of "po'u" being not symmetrical. By "da" I meant a kind of
> > place holder for that which would follow "la djon po'u", and "ro da"
> > for any such, expandable to "ro da poi steci ke'a la'i djon".  For
> > example, "John the fast runner" would be "la djon po'u le sutra
> > bajra", "John the good father" would be "la djon po'u le xamgu patfu".
>
> But unless "the fast runner" and "the good father" are the same John,
> you want "ro" to be outside the scope of "po'u".
>
>   ro da zo'u la djon po'u da cu broda
>
> is different from
>
>    la djon po'u ro da cu broda
>
> In a more expamded form, the first one is:
>
>    ro da zo'u la djon poi ke'a du da cu broda
>
> and the second is:
>
>    la djon poi ro da zo'u ke'a du da cu broda

I believe you are right, but something doesn't fully click with me
yet. I have a note of some explanation you gave on jbotcan a while ago
in a discussion with somebody else, saying that:

 "surface order reflects scope order: what comes later is within the
scope of what came first"

 "all operators (connective, quantifiers, negation) have scope in the
order in which they appear"

I understand that "ro da zo'u la djon po'u da cu broda" differs from
"la djon po'u ro da cu broda" because a different value is picked for
each "da" according to its own scope  order; but I don't see why "da"
in "la djon po'u ro da cu broda" cannot mean any sumti which serves to
restrictively identify "la djon", as in "la djon poi ro da poi steci
ke'a la djon zo'u ke'a du da cu broda".

mu'o mi'e tijlan

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