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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> But with your zo'e, mixed interpretations are necessary, e.g. to explain
> {ro prenu cu se prami zo'e noi prenu}. So I think this is no different
> from the "some dogs love every human" example. Do you think you can use
> {su'o gerku} there, despite the "chihuauas" and "German shephards"
> interpretation? If so, why?

Why not? Both interpretations are available for the English sentence,
it's not so surprizing that they also be available for the Lojban
version.

If you object to the interpretation that could get instantiated by
chihuahuas then your objection must be either that chihuahuas in
general just are not available as the value of a variable, no matter
what the context, or that they are available in certain contexts but
not as something that satisfies the x1 of gerku or the x1 or prami. So
your objection is either ontological or it has to do with the
semantics of "gerku" or "prami". In either case it is not about logic
or logical form.

>> Just "things": "I love buying things, but then I never know where to
>> put them."
>
> But the 'them' doesn't mean 'things in general', it specifically refers
> to those bought in the first clause.

In my analysis the domain of discourse here has only four (relevant)
members: I, things, my buying things, and the indirect question (I may
also need there to be several other members, each of which is a place,
for the makau to make sense, even though they are not directly
mentioned).

> So...

So again, I think your objection is either ontological: there's no
such thing as "things" that could possibly be the value of a variable,
no matter what the context, or your objection is about the semantics
of either "buy" or "put" or both: these predicates won't admit such a
value as their second argument.

If the objection is that the statement is too coarse grained for your
taste, that you prefer statements that are more precisely nuanced,
that's fine, but that doesn't mean that the coarse grained statements
violate any logical rule.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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