Re: [lojban] Lions and levels and the like

[maikxlx <maikxlx@gmail.com>]

2011/11/17 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 3:50 AM, maikxlx <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:37 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't find either "Dogs are mammals" or "Man walked on the Moon" in any
>>> way odd.
>>
>> As I tried to convey in my reply to Pierre Abbat, it's just a little odd
>> that that in the former case we have a necessary universal situation and in
>> the latter case we have a marginal existential situation, and yet in Lojban
>> both have (or are allowed to have) exactly the same logical form.  Maybe not
>> odd, but curious at least.
>
> Similarly curious are "Merkel is a woman" and "Merkel had a beer",
> with the same logical form even though in one case we have a universal
> situation and in the other an existential one.
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes

Yes but following my own intuition (and possibly that of others here),
I am not sure that the similarity between the two pairs of sentences
arises from any sort of similarity between the individuals of {lo
gerku}/{lo remna} and the "stages" of {la .merkel.}.

Instead I think that in each pair, one sentence simply expresses a
proposition that happens to be true under all possible situations
(where a "situation" is a combined world/time index (w, t)), and the
other under one (or more) specific actual situation.  The truth
conditions of a sentence can be strengthened if desired by adding
either a gnomic or an episodic aspect marker to the bridi;  e.g.{ca}
in {la .merkel. ca pinxe lo birje} shifts the situation to present
tense, episodic aspect;  {-N} in {la .merkel. -N ninmu} quantifies
over all situations gnomically (where -N means "necessarily" or
"intrinsically", I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me the
word(s) I'm looking for) .

It dawns on me in passing that in the case of {lo remna cu mabru} what
appears to be universal quantification over x1 is probably built into
the meaning {mabru} in a similar way that a kind-abstractor over x2
seems to be built into the meaning of {finti}.  So maybe {X mabru}
entails {ro X mabru} automatically by predicate definition, and maybe
these "curiosities" are fewer than they appear.

To be clear, I don't see any problem using xorlo in any of these four
sentences or similar generic ones (my verdict is out on kinds).  I
would like just to account for what I regard as the curiosities.

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