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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 5:13 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Robin Lee Powell, On 06/01/2011 19:01:
>> On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 06:52:19PM +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>>>
>>> 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.".

I precede CLL in the Lojbanic timeline, so the fact that it is in CLL
doesn't automatically rule out I might have had something to do with
it, but in fact the left-to-right rule was already in place when I
started learning Lojban.

I have often argued against the related "na" rule however, and the
contradictions and/or convolutions that it causes, and I am confident
that that will eventually be fixed.

> 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).

Yes, I think I did take part in discussions about that part. I'm not
sure the BPFK has said anything on that matter though, so even though
I have a well formed opinion on what scopes over what for most cases,
it is doubtful that there is any official last word on the matter. In
fact the CLL has a pretty confusing section on termsets and
quantifiers with "equal scope", so I would say the matter is actually
still officially ill-defined.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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