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

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

We seem to be in a three-way cross-purpose conversation.  As far as I can 
understand, for xorxes {lo broda} refers to broda-kind, a something or other 
(xorxes has always had trouble when we get down to defining it) which has 
individual brodas as manifestations (avatars, etc.).  MB seems usually to think 
{lo broda} is down up broda, the set (C-?) of brodas assigned to the world of 
the present conversation by the function which is the meaning of {broda}. which 
world he seems also to define in a fairly restricted way, a situation.  I think 
{lo broda} refers to a L-set of brodas (or just a bunch of them, without the 
set-talk) selected by the context.  When it comes to using these different 
definitions, we generally get about the same results, but some definitions 
appear to require more mechanisms than others.  (I have passed over xorxes' 
insistence on bringing in person segments necessarily along with persons and his 
contrarian refusal to have brodas along with broda kind in the universe of a 
discussion). They are also terminologically unified in that both MB 's and my 
view would hold that the maximal set of brodas in a given situation is 
broda-kind in that situation, the gulf from xorxes is merely a matter the 
difference between things among a kind and manifestations of a kind.  For MB, 
this difference requires particular quantifiers that xorxes does not need; for 
me, it requires different ways that a bunch of things may satisfy a predicate 
(which we need already for other cases).  This now projects onto questions about 
{zo'e}, which, insofar as it is anaphoric, usually anaphorizes a {lo} 
expression, and, in another role (of at least three), is used in the 
Lojban-internal definition of {lo}.  Perhaps coming to some agreement on this 
fundamental difference can get us forwarder.


----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, September 19, 2011 5:17:10 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

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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