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

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

I suppose it has to mean "three quantities of water" because otherwise there is 
no way to count, which is what quantifiers do.  Similarly for the internal 
quantifiers.  In both cases, it seems to me that we have now committed ourselves 
in a certain way and there can be no physical hanky-panky whereby the three 
quantities become one and then two and then seven and so on, without some 
explicit operations to that effect.  Such operations are considerably easier 
with water than with geometric solids a la Banach-Tarski.  Not so easily with 
dogs, say; though a certain amount of Frankenstein working might manage to make 
two more or less functional dogs out of one or one out of two (with some scraps 
left over, perhaps).  Moderately difficult with non-living apparati.  





----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, October 23, 2011 3:46:02 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

* Saturday, 2011-10-22 at 21:21 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 7:45 PM, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> 
wrote:
> > It's not in the quantifier, but in the predicate, "a quantity of water".
> 
> I'm not sure what we are disagreeing about. I didn't say it was in the
> quantifier, I said it was induced by quantifiers.
> 
> In any case, as And pointed out it can't be just any quantity or it
> would always quantify to "ci'i", so it has to be a contextually
> relevant quantity, be it a puddle, a glass, a bottle, a bucket, a
> drop, a measure, a body of water. We can either make it explicit ("ci
> dirgo be lo djacu") or leave it implicit ("ci djacu").

Whether or not {ci djacu cu zvati} can mean that three contextually
measured quantities of water are here (and I don't see why it should),
{lo ci djacu cu zvati} should uncontroversially mean that.

(although without ruling out that there are more quantities, nor that
there is perverseness in the counting of quantities - e.g. with one of
the three quantities being a subquantity of another...)

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