Re: [lojban] biodiversity and sequence of quantifiers

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday 18 November 2010 11:48:17 Michael Turniansky wrote:
> I'll take a stab at it:
>
> [fi'o suckancu da] ji'i pi ze lo ro spati poi se terdi ti cu diklo loi papa
> gugde ku no'u la sralygu'e kujoi la razgu'e kujoi la jugygu'e kujoi la
> kolombi,as joi la ekuador joi la xingu'e kujoi la bidgu'e kujoi la
> madagaskar joi la mexygu'e kujoi la pervu'ui zei gugde kujoi la  gugdecudu

This may be what they meant, but I'm not sure how they got that list of 
countries, and as the paragraph is about biodiversity, I suspect they 
mean "se spati", not "spati". Here's how I first interpreted it: "zenoce'i 
loi se spati cu xabju papa gugde" or "papa gugde cu se xabju zenoce'i loi se 
spati". The first is pretty unlikely; even if the numbers of countries with a 
particular species had a binomial distribution, no more than about 23% (is 
that right?) could occur in exactly 11 countries. The second makes some 
sense, but it seems to me that Ecuador and Madagascar are too small to 
contain 70% of all plant species.

If you know what it means, could you explain it with quantifiers and prenexes, 
and sequence order if necessary? I suspect that the eleven countries may be 
the first eleven in some relevant sequence.

Pierre
-- 
I believe in Yellow when I'm in Sweden and in Black when I'm in Wales.

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