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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 19:01:

On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 06:52:19PM +0000, And Rosta wrote:

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.


You're going to have to hold my hand more than that, I'm afraid.
Ambiguous how?


In the case of the second one, ambiguous between the two meanings the English version has: "It is not the case that A, B and C broda" versus "For each of A,B,C it is not the case that it brodas".

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.)


I didn't know that was xorxes' rule; I thought left-to-right
quantifier scope was in the CLL.  Yes, indeed:
http://dag.github.com/cll/16/5/ "The rule for dropping the prenex is
simple: if the variables appear in the same order within the bridi
as they did in the prenex, then the prenex is superfluous.".

So, I'm probably failing to understand.  Can you please explain it
like I'm very very stupid?


My mistake -- failure of memory. Presumably the then-unofficial rule was to generalize CLL's left-to-right rule for all elements in the bridi (with the possible exception of some or all selbri tcita) and to make explicit the rule that things export to the localmost rather than outermost prenex (when you have one bridi within another).

--And.

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