Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Thursday, 2011-09-08 at 19:48 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>>
>> In general, Lojban can be more vague than English. But that's not a
>> bad thing, as long as we have the means to be more precise when we
>> want or need to.
>
> Agreed, as a general principle - though a binary ambiguity between
> different logical forms is taking it too far, imho.

The logical forms are completely unambiguous. The ambiguity is in the
determination of the domain of discourse, which is part of the
interpretation. You just can't fix the domain of discourse from within
the discourse.

> But how would you disambiguate to precisely say "someone loves
> everyone"?

"su'o prenu cu prami ro prenu", for example. The fact that quantifying
over singletons violates some conversational maxim practically
excludes the (top level) generic interpretation in this case. (There's
still of course other intermediate level generics, as in "some peoples
love all peoples". If that's what the context of the conversation
calls for, that's the interpretation you will get.

>Or, for that matter, "some dogs love every human"?
>
> (You've just indicated that {su'o gerku cu prami ro remna} won't do,
> since it could be intended to be witnessed by the generic 'dogs' (or the
> generics "chihuauas" and "German shephards", for that matter))

Right, just as in English. You could be more precise: "some kind of
dogs love every human", "some dogs love every kind of human", "some
individual dogs love every kind of human", and so on. I'm sure each of
those still has more than one possible interpretation too, but the
logical form is exactly the same for all of them.

>> But they do exist in natural languages! They are all over the place.
>
> Not as widely over the place as your zo'e-within-universal analysis
> would require, surely?

I find them all over the place, yes.

>> "I love buying stuff, but then I never know where to put it."
>>
>> What is that if not a generic?
>
> How would you analyse this using generics? "Things I like to buy"?
> "Things I buy when I buy things"? I don't see.

Just "things": "I love buying things, but then I never know where to put them."

> I'd have thought this was rather an example of this weird thing English
> can do sometimes, whereby an anaphoric pronoun appears to cross
> a quantifier boundary, resulting in complicated semantics of which
> I wouldn't like to posit a general theory...

But why complicate things like that? Of course you can always
paraphrase and explain in more detail what it may mean, but if the
obvious analysis with "things" as a generic works, there's no need to
posit a hidden completely different deep logical form.

> i.e. I think the English is roughly equivalent to, though more natural
> than, "I love it when there are things which I buy, but after each such
> buying I don't know where to put those things".

Yes, they have roughly the same meaning, but the second version has a
more complicated logical form, and uses a more complex domain of
discourse. That doesn't make the first version flawed in any way.

> We could try to copy this semantics into lojban if we could figure out
> general rules for it... but for now I'd rather just leave such
> boundary-crossing uses of prosumti undefined.

OK, but with the generic interpretation there is nothing odd to
explain. It has just the same logical form as "I love having bought
this, but now I don't know where to put it."

The objection to generics is more metaphysical than logical.

> (Sorry for going on about a problem you didn't even mean to raise...
> getting prosumti working is something else I want to sort out)

Prosumti can be problematic, but in my opinion not in this example.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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