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

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

Using {zo'e} seems a bad plan, given that it is inherently ambiguous (or 
undetermined).




----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, October 15, 2011 6:22:40 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

* Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 19:29 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> 
> >> >> > > > {su'o da poi te cange cu ponse lo xasli noi da darxi .i ri se
> >> >> > > > kecti mi}
> >
> > Oh, I see. So you don't have the first sentence explicitly having the
> > meaning that the farmers hit the donkeys which they own, just that they
> > own donkeys and hit donkeys.
> 
> Right. That's why I said that with "poi" instead of "noi" it would be
> a different matter. Notice that in English you said "hit the donkeys
> which they own" rather than "hit donkeys, which they own", so you are
> talking as if it was "poi". 

I don't see how using {poi} could rule out this constant interpretation.
For each {da}, the kind 'donkeys' does satisfy {da darxi ke'a}, so how
can the {poi} clause exclude it? 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.

> (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}.

> > Similarly, in {so'i da poi te cange cu darxi lo speni be da},
> > {lo speni be da} could have constant referent the kind 'humans'?
> 
> "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?

Martin

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