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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 12:31 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Saturday, 2011-11-05 at 22:28 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>
> 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,

No, it could only mean that some professor talked to each student.

> 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.

Your English suggests to me a single event of talking, while your
Lojban suggests a new event of talking for each of the students. But
in any case, the Lojban requires at least one ctuca to be in tavla
relationship with each of le tadni, there is no possibility of a
different logical structure. If the context does not make it
sufficiently clear what exactly counts as a ctuca, or that all the
tavla relations were in fact part of a single tavla event, then the
speaker should try to be more clear. The problem is not in the logical
structure.

>> >> 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}.

(You need "gi'o" rather than ".o") That says something quite different
though. It doesn't even preclude the possibility that every ranmapku
is bolmapku as long as there is one bolmapku that is not ranmapku.

> Or we could use properties rather than kinds, and say {lo ka
> ranmapku na du lo ka bolmapku},

That doesn't say they are both kinds of mapku, although in this case
that's kind of obvious from the lujvo. It wouldn't be obvious in the
case of "lo xanto jo'u lo djirafa cu ficysi'u lo ka klesi lo mabru".

> 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).

And presumably it doesn't bother you that you need to be so roundabout
to say something that seems so simple.


> 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).

Why is beret - hat - garment artificial?

I'm not sure where you put the base level for "lo valsi". But at one
level the first and seventeenth valsi of some book may count as one,
at a lower level they may count as two, and at an even lower level
they may count as thousands, depending on how many copies of the book
were printed.

>> > 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.
>> >
>> > 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!

I tried to not make it sound as an out of hand rejection, which is not
to say I find it alluring in any way. :)

> 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}.

That's starting to look like Blobularity to me. Are you trying to make
a distinction between "vo lo cidja poi do nelci" and "vo 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}.

Equality is always the equivalence relation, at any level.

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

It does, but not everyone is happy with CiV and CuV syllables.

> 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"?

Interesting idea, but for it to be actually used we need something
simpler than "fi'u vei ni'e ka (...) ma kau ve'o".

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

But how would that be different from "lo broda"?

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

I'm not sure I get this one.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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