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Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
Martin Bays, On 13/10/2011 05:33:
To take a simple example: when the {lo} is read generically, what does
{lo remna cu prami ri} mean? There are two obvious possibilities
- "humans love humans" (both generic) and "humans love themselves". The
first is natural only if we admit kinds.
The debate may have moved on, but back in the day, I'd have understood it to mean "the human loves themself" (or, equivalently, "the human loves the human", just as "John loves himself" and "John loves John" are equivalent in logic or Lojban), i.e. a reading in which the two obvious possibilities you mention are in fact nondistinct (because there's only one human). It's true that, given that "the human loves themself", one is unsure whether one should infer that "humans loves humans" or that "humans love themselves", but that is a metaphysical matter rather than a linguistic one, and hence not something for Lojban or Lojbanology to address.
(For nastier a example, consider the apparently classic {ro te cange poi
ponse lo xasli cu darxi ri}... although I'd be happy simply considering
this to be meaningless)
Do you mean the Lojban is meaningless, because of the inadequacy of the rules for identifying and interpreting the antecedent of {ri} (in which case I'm sure you're right)? The proposition intended by donkey sentences is easy to grasp, and pretty commonplace, but hard to formulate in ordinary logic; a logical language should find a way to render the proposition into logic and express it succinctly.
--And.
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