* Wednesday, 2011-09-07 at 20:31 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >
> > Any problem with this? As far as I can see, it explains all common usage
> > of {zo'e} - and also of {lo} and {le} with their {zo'e (n|v)oi}
> > interpretations.
>
> "zo'e" can have an irrelevant or an obvious value. Close-scope
> existential quantification may perhaps substitute zo'e in cases of
> irrelevant values, but not in cases of obvious values:
>
> - xu do klama lo zarci
> - mi klama
>
> That's "I go [there]", not "I go [somewhere]".
Point taken. But given the nebulosity of obviousness, as far as
assigning boolean truth values to sentences goes, there arguably isn't
a difference between "obvious things" and "some things".
There's also the point that if you make an existential claim, you
generally will have a witness in mind; if you don't expect the witness
to be obvious, it would be friendly to specify it.
Grice would agree, maybe.
> Or:
>
> -mi na klama
>
> "I don't go (there)", not "I don't go (anywhere)".
>
> Or:
>
> - ro ma'a klama
>
> "All of us go (there)", not "each of us go [somewhere]".
Oh, really? Would you actually say that {ro ma'a klama} is false were
the destinations to be different?
I thought not, hence the close scope.
> "zo'e" is just like "mi", "do", "ti", "ta", "tu"... only much more
> open ended as to what referents it can pick up from the context of the
> utterance.
There are scope issues, though... e.g. if you agree that {zo'e se fetsi
ro da poi mamta} is true (which maybe, given your examples above, you
actually don't), the zo'e has to scope inside the da.
It sounds like you might be giving it longest scope rather than
shortest, which gets around that kind of issue... though it still has to
scope inside the da in {ro da zo'u broda zo'e noi brode da}.
Martin
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