Re: [lojban] Meaning of multiple negations

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
> Indefinite descriptions shouldn't reduce to {da} constructs, I'm fairly
> sure; they should reduce to {lo} constructs.

I disagree, but as you say it's not relevant here.

> Regardless, beginning here:
> su'o da poi prenu cu ricfu gi'e na gleki
> You can indeed reduce it to what you had,

Good.

> but that also reduces just as well
> to:
> su'o da poi prenu goi ko'a cu ricfu .ije ko'a na gleki

No, it doesn't. What is the value assigned to "ko'a" in that first
bridi? Is it any one person, some person who is rich, some person who
is both rich and not happy, or something else?  Can the assignment of
a value or values to ko'a depend on the second bridi? Attaching "goi
ko'a" to something that doesn't have referents (i.e. a quantifier
expression) is somewhat strange, because "goi ko'a" is meant to assign
some referent(s) to ko'a.

> in which case the bridi with the gleki gives {na} full bridi scope. The
> bridi tail connectives and forethought connectives all do this, pe'i ca'e
> ru'e. The assignment is subtle, however, I agree; I'm thinking of it as
> being purely syntactic, since I don't know how to quantify a prenex over
> several jufra.

To use a prenex that is common to several sentences you can use
"prenex tu'e sentence .i sentence .i sentence ... tu'u", but how does
that help with the ko'a assignment?

If by "purely syntactic" you mean that "ko'a" is standing for the
expression "su'o da poi prenu" (which I don't think it can) then it
still doesn't work, because "su'o da poi prenu cu ricfu .ije su'o da
poi prenu na gleki" doesn't have the desired meaning under any scope
rule for "na".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

-- 
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.