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

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

Le'see.  I think I understand what is going on here.  Let me say it out for 
corrections and then I can get on (though I will comment on this understanding 
now).  Somebody (the layered responses without summaries makes it difficult to 
figure out who is advocating what) holds that, in a given conversation,  {cinfo} 
(for example) may mean any of at least: Lion, lions, lion, lion segments 
(temporally defined), lion kinds, lionness.  And which {cinfo} means in that 
conversation in no way determines what, say, {xanti} (or whatever "elephant" is 
) means in that same conversation.  Somebody else holds that this makes Lojban 
predicates ambiguous (at least across conversations -- the listed definitions 
are merely suggestive, not to be taken literally, or, if so, at least liberally) 
and, further, that it does not work because, in fact, most conversations turn 
out to involve shifts from one meaning to another, with corresponding changes in 
the domain, and with disastrous logical consequences (AE implies EA, for 
example). 

The first idea seems to rest on 1) a desire to show that Lojban is not SAE 
metaphysically, but rather can be viewed as of several different types in 
different contexts and 2) the looseness of English (and presumably Spanish and 
most other familiar languages, possibly excepting Chinese) usage, which does in 
fact shift among these various meanings unmarked.  Unfortunately, goal 1) 
misses, since all that is shown is how wide the notion of thing is, not that NPs 
in Lojban refer to other than things.  Source 2) is, of course, just 
irrelevant.  The fact that English (etc.) is sloppy does not mean that Lojban 
is.  Lojban has expressions for most of the distinctions here suggested and can 
easily fill in any gaps (there may be a infinite number of ways to slice the 
baloney, but at any given point only a finite number have been used, and we can 
cover that number).  Lojban can, of course, be telegraphic, dropping qualifiers 
that are not needed in context (indeed, Gricean rules require this), but the 
semantics (and, probably, the pragmatics) are up to handling this and so this 
need not change the underlying nature of what is going on.
As for the other position, I confess that I cannot follow the arguments, which 
seem to me to involve illegitimate (or at least misleading) uses of quantifiers 
and a lot of technical mumble-jumble that does not obviously serve the point 
(side one seems to do quite a bit of this, too, and side two may be merely 
repeating that).  

In short, this seems to me a tempest in a teacup -- without any real ripples 
even -- and of no real significance to Lojban.
Stepping back to the official topic here for a moment.  The notion that {zo'e} 
means "what I have in mind or would have it I thought about it" leads to the 
paradoxical (but not contradictory) situation: A: xu do klama le zarci.  B: na 
go'i . mi klama le zarci.  That is, B went to the store, but not from A's 
intended starting point or not along A's intended path or not using A's intended 
mode of transportation.  But rather using B's intended starting point, path and 
mode.
Taking {zo'e} to be just {da} cleverly disguised avoids this problem but creates 
others of its own, in terms scope and negation problems (which happen to work 
out alright here)



----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, November 5, 2011 10:31:46 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

* Saturday, 2011-11-05 at 22:28 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 8:34 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Saturday, 2011-11-05 at 18:18 -0300 - Jorge Llambías 
><jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >
> >> I think I do get it. I just don't think it has anything to do with
> >> logical structure.
> >
> > Well that's a matter of definitions.
> >
> > But note e.g. that the classic example of scope ambiguity in english,
> > "someone loves everyone", can be looked at this way:
> >
> > A: "Someone loves everyone."
> > B: "Oh yeah? Who?
> > A: "Their mother."
> >
> > A: {su'o prenu cu prami ro prenu}
> > B: {ma prami ro prenu}
> > A: {lo mamta}
> >
> > (Lojban can't seem to get at the "their" in "their mother", but that's
> > not really important)
> >
> > (and yes, I know by now that you would consider A to be breaking your
> > favoured domain conventions by having both mundane people and Mother as
> > a person in the same domain; but (a) that's an informal rule, which
> > appears to be flexible (you broke it in the xabju example), and (b) it's
> > not important to the essence of the example that prenu is being used on
> > both sides)
> 
> I still don't think that's a matter of logical structure. It's A
> tricking B into one interpretation to get an effect once the "right"
> interpretation is presented. That's how many jokes work.

Well, I presented it in joke form - which was possibly foolish as
I didn't intend to trivialise the issue!

Really, I don't see that the situation is significantly better than it
is in english.

A search for "quantifier scope ambiguity examples" yields various
examples of the issue in english, most of which appear to go through
directly in kindful lojban.

Another clear example:
    "A professor talked to all the students"
    {su'o ctuca cu tavla ro le tadni}
could mean only that each student was talked to by a professor -
formally, just because the kind Professor ctucas; or if we apply your
informal rule that quantification indicates that there should be
multiple things at the same level involved, then because it could be
that they were all talked to by a logic professor.

> >> Consider "a beret is a type of hat". I would say "lo ranmapku cu klesi
> >> lo mapku".
> >
> > In reality, I'd just say {ro ranmapku cu mapku}.
> 
> What about "berets and bowler hats are different types of hats"?
> "lo ranmapku jo'u lo bolmapku cu ficysi'u lo ka klesi lo mapku"

Again we could avoid kinds, and just say {su'o da ranmapku .o nai
bolmapku}. Or we could use properties rather than kinds, and say {lo ka
ranmapku na du lo ka bolmapku}, or copy your approach with {lo ka
ranmapku ku jo'u lo ka bolmapku cu ficysi'u lo ka kairni'i lo ka mapku}
(where ro da poi selkai ku'o ro de poi selkai zo'u go da de kairni'i gi
ro di ckaji da na.a de) (although {go'e fi lo ka ma kau ckaji} might
make more sense).

> > But if you forced me to use kind terminology, I'd want a second
> > predicate for "x1 is a subkind of x2". From the gimste definitions, I'd
> > be more likely to use {klesi} for that than "x1 is an instance of x2",
> > which is closer to {mupli}. In fact, {mupli} seems to want a property in
> > x2, so maybe this could be {klemupli}.
> 
> (I would rather re-define "mupli" into "x1 is an instance of x2", but anyway.)
> 
> ...
> > But maybe it's true that kinds are useful enough that the language
> > should have special facilities for handling them - e.g. allowing {lo
> > mapku} to get a kind. We just need to have ways to disambiguate.
> 
> "klesi" allows us to disambiguate between two levels. Disambiguating
> between a potentially infinite number of levels is trickier. As the
> old Lojban saying goes: the price of infinite precision is infinite
> verbosity

Can you give an example where we might want to go up two levels from
mundanes (as opposed to their stages or whatever)? I wouldn't be
surprised if there were such, and maybe you've given examples before,
but none spring to mind (other than artificial examples like "kinds of
kinds of garment" - unless you can think of natural cases where we'd
want to talk about those).

> > The "imaginaries" terminology of the other thread gives one plausible
> > approach to this - treating kinds as analogous (and, in a sense, dual)
> > to bunches. {su'o} would get neither bunches nor imaginaries, but {lo}
> > could get either.
> >
> > I suspect that a system based on this could explain e.g. most if not all
> > of the sentences in your alis, while also being sufficiently
> > disambiguable to satisfy me.
> >
> > Would you reject such a solution out of hand?
> 
> I think that covers most needs, but I suspect there are cases when we
> may want to quantify over kinds.

Hmm. That didn't sound like a rejection!

For quantifying over kinds: if the rule is that {lo} gets a bunch of
imaginaries which are all imaginaries with respect to the same
equivalence relation aka differentiation criterion (i.e., to import one
more piece of model theoretic parlance, a bunch of imaginaries from the
same "imaginary sort"), I see nothing wrong with using e.g.
{ca lo prulamnicte mi citka vo lo cidja poi do nelci}.

I would also want it to be possible to specify that we are fa'u are not
talking about imaginaries (with respect to a non-trivial equivalence
relation, i.e. one coarser than equality), perhaps with {lio} fa'u
{loi}.

(No that wasn't a typo! The PEG morphology allows {lio} as a cmavo form,
right?)

I'd also want to be able to specify the equivalence relation in question
in the former case, i.e. as per And's (iii) of the other thread. I don't
know how to do that... maybe with inner quantifiers?
{re lo fi'u vei ni'e ka skari ma kau ve'o mapku cu vi zvati} for
"two colours of hat are here", or
{so'o lo fi'u vei ni'e ka danlu ma kau ve'o cinfo ba zi morsi} for
"several species of lion will soon become extinct"?

With {lio broda} being (blissfully) short for {lo fi'u vei ni'e co'e ve'o
broda}?

And {lo fi'u ro cinfo} being the wholly singularised lion, i.e. Lion
(rather than an infinitesimal amount of lion)?

Martin

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