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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:47 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> I suppose the point is that effectively forcing *distributivity* is
> possible, in this way. But I don't know what could force
> non-distributivity, unless we actually have ambiguous predicates.

We do have predicates that are non-commital about distributivity. In
"ko'a bevri ko'e", and assuming both ko'a and ko'e have more than one
referent each, we don't know (and possibly don't care) how the loads
were distributed. If we say "the men carried the tools to the shed" we
may not know which of the men carried which of the tools, whether some
tool was carried by more than one man, whether some man carried more
than one tool, and so on.

>> She could have said: ".ei no roi ku su'o da poi cinfo zo'u do klama lo
>> jibni be da".
>
> With that being clearer just because it would be perverse to
> existentially quantify over a singleton set, indicating that the
> intended domain probably has multiple things which cinfo?

Right.

> But they could
> just as well be multiple kinds of lion rather than individual lions?

Yes, but that would still be enough to forbid Moople from getting
close to any kind of lion, even if he accepted the existence of kinds
for a minute.

> I think she ought to be able to be even clearer.

She should say "su'o do" and "su'o jibni" for extra safety.

>> (I first wrote "ko" instead of "do", but that suggests the scope of
>> the imperative is within the scope of "no roi", which seems wrong.
>
> Hmm... I'd have thought that the imperativeness of {ko}, like the
> questioniness of {ma} and perhaps the constancy of {lo}, beats ordinary
> quantifiers. Any reason to have it otherwise?

It just sounds wrong to me. Fortunately in the case of "ko", I can
always replace it with ".ei ... do" and place ".ei" at the right
level.

>> In any case the moral of the story was that there are sound
>> evolutionary reasons for the kind approach, since obviously we are all
>> descended from Cless and he is the one that got the right meaning. :)
>
> Somehow this doesn't seem to be the moral I've taken. Maybe Moople had
> a cousin with individuating parents?

But what language do they speak? Not English, because in English we
can say "lions are dangerous, don't go near them".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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