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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 19:00 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>> > That does raise (again) the possibly important question of where it is
>> > that a bunch of lions cinfos.
>> >
>> > Obvious answers:
>> > (i) everywhere at least one of them zvatis;
>> > (ii) at some specificish locale, such as their centre of mass;
>> > (iii) everywhere.
>> >
>> > (ii) is icky.
>>
>> It could also be the minimum volume that contains them all,
>
> Isn't that the same as (i)?

I took (i) to mean they were manywhere (there and there and there and
there and ...), while (ii) meant they were just onewhere (only there).
I was suggesting that (ii) could possibly be one big volume-like there
rather than a small point-like there.


>> Where would you say you remna? Is there a single right answer?
>
> Unless we're working with (iii), my answer would be: where I am. If you
> asked me {xu do bu'u ti remna}, I'd probably say {go'i} if you were
> pointing at my spleen, but {na go'i} if you were pointing at one of my
> hairs, but would leave it to philosophers to debate whether I'm right or
> not.

If I were pointing at your spleen, I should probably say "bu'u ta". If
I were pointing at the room we were both in, I could say "bu'u ti". I
think it would generally make more sense to me to say "do zvati lo vi
kumfa" than "do zvati lo betfu be do".

But I agree it is a matter better left to philosophers, which is to
say that there is no single right answer. Same thing would happen if I
asked you when you remna. Did you remna yesterday and remna again
today, or is there just one long when that you remna in?

> Anyway, whatever the precise answer, if we work with anything like (i)
> or (iii) it seems that actually {lo vi cinfo} only works if the
> tautology is
>    {ro lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo}
> and not just
>    {lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo} ,
> because the second holds even if all but one of the lions is off
> in africa (or, assuming possible worlds are handled analogously, are
> space-lions from Quuxkl).

I obviously would say that the tautology is "lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo",
which of course does not exclude the (non-tautological) possibility
that "lo vi cinfo cu vu ji'a cinfo".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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