More interestingly for me though, what in the hell does "se xu" mean?
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Ian Johnson
<blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
{zo'u} works like this if I understand correctly:
PA da PA de ... zo'u -> quantifying da de ...
PA bu'a PA bu'e ... zo'u -> quantifying bu'a bu'e ...
<any other sumti> zo'u -> defining the topic in an imprecisely defined sense
In any case, you put a string of sumti before it. In one case, doing this quantifies over sumti. In another case, it quantifies over selbri. In still another case, it doesn't quantify over ANYTHING.
.i la'e di'u .e la'e di'u xi re na se nibli .i la'e lo'u ro da le'u .e la'e lo'u ro bu'a le'u cu sumti .i to se xu toi ni'ibo lo'u ro bu'a zo'u le'u cmacrkuantifi lo'i sumti .enai lo'i selbri
What is especially egregious is:
However, indefinite descriptions involving the
bu'a-series cannot be imported from the prenex.
(CLL 16.13)
which to me sounds like "there's magic going on here, so what happens every other time is forbidden in this specific case."
My general thought about this is that it's awkward because the language doesn't have very strong self-referential tools for things like referring to predicates as predicates. I asked recently about how to refer to "broda-as-predicate" and was given {la'e zo broda}; I don't know if that's really adequate for things like quantification over selbri variables and so on.
Any thoughts; disagreements, ideas for improvement, etc.?
mu'o mi'e .latros.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.