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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 10:36 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> Would you accept that "Lions are ruining my garden" is a reasonable
> possible translation of {lo cinfo cu ca daspo lo mi purdi}?

Yes.

> Would you agree with Chierchia (Ch98 p.364) that "Lions are ruining my
> garden" means that there exist some lions which are ruining my garden?

Only in the sense that "I am in my garden" means that there exists
some stage of me that is now in my garden. So yes, but not really. It
is a posible explanation of the meaning, but in terms of things that
were never mentioned. When I say "lions are ruining my garden" I don't
really mean to bring individual lion manifestations into the picture,
just as when I say "I am in my garden" I don't mean to bring stages of
me into the picture.

> If so - that's the kind of existential quantification which we don't see
> with {mi} or {ti}. {lo cinfo cu ca na daspa lo mi purdi} has to have as
> as a meaning that no lions are destroying my garden.

No, it doesn't have to bring individual lions into the picture. It
just says that if my garden is being ruined, it must be by something
other than lions, or that if lions are ruining something, it must be
something other than my garden, or if lions are doing something to my
garden, it must be something other than ruining it, and so on. You may
infer from it that no lion is ruining my garden, but that's not what
it means.

> Could it be that our only point of disagreement here is that you'd
> prefer to leave {lo cinfo} as a Kind, and have a later stage of
> processing do the conversion to (in this case) an existential, while I'm
> suggesting we skip the Kind stage?

I don't want to introduce at any point an existential claim about
individual lions. (If you do, you must then make exceptions for
intensional contexts.)

> Actually that can't quite be the only point of disagreement, as I'd want
> an existential or generic reading of {lo} to be allowed in cases when
> there's also a pure-Kind reading - e.g. "I don't like lions" vs
> "I don't like some lions" vs "I don't like generic lions", all meaning
> quite different things; if {lo cinfo} in {mi na nelci lo cinfo} returned
> a Kind, it seems we'd have no way of accessing the latter two meanings,
> since the first would take priority.

Yes, "I don't like lions" takes priority. It could also mean "I don't
like the lions" in a context where we already have some individual
lions in the domain of discourse.

> Let me make that a question: do you consider "there are some lions such
> that I don't like them" to be an interpretation of {mi na nelci lo
> cinfo}? If so, how do you obtain it?

That would have to be "su'o da poi cinfo zo'u mi na nelci da" or
equivalently "mi na nelci ro cinfo" or "mi nelci me'i cinfo" or "mi
nelci su'o cinfo na ku" or "su'o cinfo na se nelci mi".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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