Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language)

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

----- Original Message ----
From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 12:52:19 PM
Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: 
Vote for the Future Global Language)

Robin Lee Powell, On 06/01/2011 17:19:
> On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 05:08:02PM +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>>
>> In English, logical scope tends to be ambiguous, at least within
>> the same clause. So English "not A, B and C" can mean "It is not
>> the case that each of A,B,C is the case" or "For each x, where x
>> is one of A,B,C, it is not the case that x is the case".
>>
>> Unless it has been fixed by recent BPFK action, Lojban has
>> *exactly the same ambiguity* with regard to logical scope between
>> elements that are not explicitly prenexed.
>
> Show me an example please.

"su'o broda ro brode cu brodi"
"na ku a bu e by e cy cu broda"

Ten years ago these were ambiguous. Xorxes proposed a rule that items in higher 
clauses have scope over items in lower clauses (i.e. that items export to the 
prenex of the localmost clause) and that when two items are in the same clause, 
the leftward element has scope over the rightward. (It's a shame to have to 
'pollute' the purely hierarchical structure of logical form with left-to-right 
order of forms, but it's by far the simplest way to rescue Lojban in its (then) 
current state. Perhaps the BPFK has made xorxes's rule official, in which case I 
wonder what happened to the rule about the scope of selbri tcita "na", and to 
the scope of selbri tcita in general.)

** Were these really ambiguous as recently as 10 years ago?  There are problems 
about what the quantifiers mean exactly and there are always RHE problems, with 
scope mainly.  But seems to be pretty clear from the LHE (prenex) perspective 
(issues about the second example were about the translation of an English case).

--And.

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