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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> It could *suggest* that the {lo xasli}
> should be interpreted more specifically, I suppose, but I don't see why
> it should do so any more than the {noi} clause.

"noi" makes perfect sense when applied to a singleton. "poi", while
still interpretable, doesn't make that much sense because the only
thing a singelton could be restricted to is itself, so no real
restriction. It's the same situation that occurs with quantifiers: you
can quantify over a singleton, but since doing so is rather pointless,
the mere presence of a quantifier suggests the domain should not be a
singleton.

>> (In fact I'm never quite sure about what to do with "poi" when it is
>> not being used to restrict the domain of a quantifier.)
>
> Quite. If it does do anything, there's also the issue of which gets
> priority in {ro lo broda poi brode}.

Does it make an actual difference? "ro lo broda poi brode" = "ro da
poi me lo broda zi'e poi brode".

>> "lo speni be da" is "zo'e noi speni da". I don't see how you could get
>> rid of the unbound variable there. There's no referential "lo speni"
>> in the non-referential "lo speni be da".
>
> OK, but if {lo speni be da} == {zo'e noi speni da}, then we have
> a situation analogous to that above - with {zo'e} in place of {lo
> xasli}. {zo'e} can be taken to referential, for example with referent
> the kind 'humans', which does indeed satisfy {ke'a speni da} for each
> da.
>
>> > Given this, I'm now slightly surprised that you're willing to allow {lo}
>> > to ever give a Skolem function rather than a constant!
>>
>> If the selbri that "lo" transforms into a sumti contains an unbound
>> variable, then I don't see how "lo" can create out of it anything
>> other than a function.
>
> So am I taking "{lo} -> {zo'e noi}" too literally?

Hmm... Maybe you are right, and it never need be a function, or at
least not always. It needs more thought.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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