Re: [lojban] Explicit non-restriction

[Daniel Brockman <dbrockman@gmail.com>]

>> 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?
>
> My comment was meant to be about "ro da" in general, not about its
> particular use in "me ro da".

Ah, yes, okay.

> "me PA da" doesn't strictly make any sense with PA as a proper
> quantifier, because what "me" needs is something with referents (so it
> can create the selbri "x1 is among the referents of <sumti>"),

Whoa, major insight now.  I understand!

> and what PA as a quantifier does is quantify a bridi, so we need to
> interpret "me PA da" in some way and the obvious choice is as "me lo
> PA da", where PA is no longer a quantifier.

Interesting.

> "lo ro da" is the sumti
> that has everything in the universe of discourse as referents, and so
> "ma poi me (lo) ro da" indeed makes no restrictions, because any
> number of things can be among the total number of things without the
> need for an aggregate of them.

Ah, of course!  Yes, that's what I meant to say!

    .i do nelci ma poi me lo ro da

Wow, it sounds so much more sensible.  I think people might
even understand it.  Thanks!

Everything becomes so much easier without quantifiers! :-)

> So, I wasn't really objecting to what you were doing, but just to the
> wording "everything is a referent of {ro da} (by definition)".
>
> "ro da" is an operator on a bridi, not something with referents.

Yes, I see!  So, to reword that:

Each thing (in turn) is a referent of {da} given a {ro da} prenex.

Am I correct now?  (And did I use "each" correctly?)

>> It seems to me that you can always
>> sensibly answer {no da} to a {ma} question.
>
> Well, yes, sort of. "Always" is always tricky. How can you sensibly
> answer "no da" to:
>
>   ma du da
>
> I suppose in an empty universe of discourse you can.

Of course, I didn't mean to say that {no da} is always a correct
answer to any {ma} question.  What I meant was that it always
means something, whether it's the truth or a lie.

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