* Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 16:45 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 15:08 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:50 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >> > * Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 12:16 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >> >> >> {ro te cange poi ponse lo xasli cu darxi ri}
> >> >> I would say the Lojban is meaningful and (roughly) equivalent to
> >> >> "every farmer who is a donkey-owner is a donkey-beater".
> >> > i.e. equivalent to {ro te cange poi ponse lo xasli cu darxi lo xasli}?
> >> Not exactly, because we have no guarantee that the first "lo xasli"
> >> and the second "lo xasli" will always have the same referent.
> > Ah, of course, you have the first {lo xasli} having the same referent
> > for all farmers, namely the kind 'donkeys'. Yes? And then the {ri} has
> > this kind as its referent,
> Right.
>
> > and then you declare that kinds in x2 of ponse and darxi resolve
> > existentially,
>
> I'm not sure I do declare that. Do you declare that any individual in
> the x2 of ponse and darxi resolves existentially? i.e. if I hit
> someone, do I hit some stage of them, or do I hit all of their stages?
> Or are stages not necessarily relevant? If you do declare existential
> resolution for individuals, then I might be willing to declare it for
> kinds as well.
For me, there are no stages. Tenses deal with all that. If you actually
hit someone now, you actually hit them now. There's no room for
quantification - unless it be over positions on their body, perhaps,
which I would indeed consider existentially quantified by default.
In english, "I am actually hitting donkeys" seems to clearly mean that
there are actual donkeys (probably at least two) which you're in the
process of beating up; Carlson and followers would have this meaning
arrived to by going via the kind 'donkeys'.
I'm asking whether you would analyse {mi ca ca'a darxi lo xasli}
similarly, when {lo xasli} is given referent the kind 'donkeys' (which
would be a perverse thing to do when you could directly give it
witness donkeys as referents, but would be less perverse in the case of
{mi ca ca'a na darxi lo xasli}.
> > and context ensures that for a given farmer the glorked domain of
> > the existential quantification in the darxi part is the set of
> > donkeys that farmer owns.
>
> "May suggest" rather than "ensure", assuming this existential
> resolution is at all required.
OK.
> > Actually, can I take the opportunity to ask a crucial question I don't
> > think I yet directly have: is the use of kinds necessary for you to get
> > the forall-exists meaning of {ro te cange cu ponse lo xasli},
>
> But it is not me who gets that meaning. It is you who insists that
> that's the meaning. For me there is no existential quantification
> present. The statement with existential quantification is a different,
> more fine grained one.
But one which can be deduced, no?
Anyway, the question was a formal one: in {broda ro da lo brode}, can
the referents of {lo brode} vary with da? Have you a definite opinion
either way?
> > > > {su'o da poi te cange cu ponse lo xasli noi da darxi .i ri se
> > > > kecti mi}
> > Ah. Maybe you don't handle {noi} on {lo} as I expected. I was assuming:
> > {lo xasli noi da darxi}
> > == {zo'e noi xasli zi'e noi da darxi}
> > == {zo'e noi xasli gi'e se darxi da}
> > ~= {lo xasli je se darxi be da}
> >
> > such that you can't have a referent constant with respect to {da}, and
> > hence the {ri} (being outside of the scope of {da}) doesn't have any
> > referent.
>
> Those transformations seem fine in themselves. The only question is
> whether the antecedent of "ri" is the referring expression "lo xasli"
> or the non-referring expression (because of the unbound variable) "lo
> xasli noi da darxi". If you take the non-referring expression as the
> antecedent of "ri", you can't use "ri" outside the scope of the
> quantifier that binds "da".
But {lo xasli} doesn't actually have a constant referent in this
sentence, does it? If it does, what is it?
Martin
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