Re: [lojban] Explicit non-restriction

[Daniel Brockman <dbrockman@gmail.com>]

>> No, because everything is a referent of {ro da} (by definition).
>
> Yes, but.
>
> Given "ro" as a singular quantifier, everything takes turns being the
> value of "da", one thing at a time.
>
> If you don't have aggregates as things themselves in your universe of
> discourse, then that puts some limitations to the kinds of claims you
> can make about "everything", you can only make claims that apply to
> each thing individually. (Of course aggregates are cheap to add, so
> that isn't necessarily a big limitation.)

So you're saying that {ma poi me ro da} actually ends up
restricting {ma} to *each* thing?  In other words, it would
have to be everything at the same time?

I should have known better than to use logical quantification
without knowing what I'm doing. :-)

> The proposed plural quantifier "ro'oi" takes care of that by allowing
> the bound variable to take any number of values at a time (without
> having to create an aggregate of them as one thing). So "ro'oi da zo'u
> da broda" says not only that every one thing brodas but also every two
> things broda, every three things broda, every four things broda, and
> so on.

Wouldn't that just make it even worse in this case?

>>> What if the answer is {no da}?
>>
>> You can still answer {no da}.
>
> Right, the answer to a question is never limited by the form of the
> question. How to answer a question is always a matter of pragmatics.
> The form of the question can only suggest the form of the answer, but
> if one needs to change the form in order to be truthful, informative,
> clear and relevant, one should not hesitate to do so. What matters to
> the person asking something is that you tell them what they want to
> know, not that you fill in a form properly (at least if they are a
> person and not a machine or a bureaucrat).

Yes, of course.  In this case, though, wouldn't it also make
sense to a machine?  It seems to me that you can always
sensibly answer {no da} to a {ma} question.

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