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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> So rather than model merely telling us whether, given a proposition
> P and a point w in the space of worlds, P holds at w, it instead tells
> us whether, given a proposition P and a *subset* W of the space of
> worlds, P holds at/in/on W.

That's one way of thinking about tense. Another way is not to extract
the time/space information out of the proposition at all, make it an
integral part of the proposition, so that the tensed sentence "mi pu
klama" is (roughly) equivalemt to the untensed sentence "lo nu mi
klama cu purci", just like the tagged sentence "mi bai klama" is
(roughly) equivalent to the untagged sentence "lo nu mi klama cu se
bapli". In this view, space and time are just additional aspects of
the world, not indices on worlds.

> Suppose ko'a is assigned to a bunch of three lions, one of which is in
> my garden, one of which is in my living room, and the third of which is
> in Nairobi (I don't live in Nairobi).
>
> With this new setup, it's now consistent to have:
>
> xu ko'a vi le mi purdi cu cinfo .i na go'i
> xu ko'a ne'i le mi surla kumfa cu cinfo .i na go'i
> xu ko'a ne'i la nairobis cinfo .i na go'i
> xu ko'a ga'u la terdi cu cinfo .i go'i
>
> So the upshot is that there's no need to make {ro lo broda cu broda} be
> a tautology to have {lo vi cinfo} get only nearby lions; it wouldn't get
> ko'a in the above example.

If you don't want to go through many worlds, you can just ask whether
these are true:

xu lo nu ko'a cinfo cu zvati lo mi purdi
xu lo nu ko'a cinfo cu nenri lo mi surla kumfa
xu lo nu ko'a cinfo cu nenri la nairobis
xu lo nu ko'a cinfo cu gapru la terdi

That only involves understanding "zvati", "nenri" and "gapru", we
don't need to concern ourselves with worlds or sets of worlds. So
instead of asking where a certain proposition is true, you ask where a
certain event takes place.

I would tend to agree with your answers to the ne'i questions. The
last one makes me think of winged lions, or maybe lions in a space
station, since presumably the Earth's atmosphere is part of the Earth.
I'm not sure about the first one. (I will take it by "vi" you meant
"bu'u"="fi'o se zvati", since for me "vi"="fi'o cmalu tersei".) I
think for "ko'a zvati ko'e" to be true, it is not necessary that ko'a
be completely contained inside of ko'e, as with nenri. If you ask "xu
ko'a cinfo bu'u lo mi purdi" I would prefer to answer "pa ko'a go'i"
or "su'o ko'a go'i" or "me'i ko'a go'i" instead of either plain "go'i"
or "na go'i" because whichever of those is true, with such an odd
bundle of referents for "ko'a", it is unhelpful.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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