[lojban] xorlo and default quantifiers

[Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>]

So I was thinking about this earlier today and came to a realization.  If xorlo says that there are no default quantifiers for {lo} then wouldn't {no} be a reasonable possibility for the assumed quantifier?

e.g. {mi citka lo plise}.  {lo plise} has no outer quantifier (implicit or explicit), but I suspect that most people will pick up from context that I in fact {citka pa lo su'opa plise} or something like it.  Furthermore, if I said {mi nelci lo nu tcidu .i mi ponse lo cukta} I would think that people would read that as something like {mi ponse so'o lo so'i cukta} or something like it.

So if context can change the assumptions that the tecusku makes about the secusku, then couldn't one of those assumptions be {no lo cukta} since there is no proscribed default?

Either the default quantifiers of {lo} should be {su'o} or it should be reasonable to assume that {mi xebni lo nu tcidu .ija'ebo mi ponse lo cukta} could be understood as {mi xebni lo nu tcidu .ija'ebo mi ponse no lo cukta}.  In my mind the latter is an unsafe assumption and I suspect that most tecusku would respond with something like {.ue do cusku lo du'u brodado na nelci lo nu tcidu .iku'i do ji'a cusku lo nu do ponse lo cukta .i va'o lo nu broda kei mi sruma lo nu na brode}.  Therefore, I argue that even if the grammar claims that {lo} has no default quantifiers, people read lojban with the assumption that {lo}'s implicit quantifiers are {su'o}.

Thoughts?

mu'o mi'e la .cribe.

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