[lojban] No title, since the subject will have changed by the time it gets there

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

Summary
1. {zo'e}, as implicit in unfilled places, can't mean either "what I (would 
have) had in mind" or a particular quantifier, because there are too many cases 
where it has to mean the other.  It can't be {zi'o} either, since that really 
does both the sense and reference of the underlying predicate (think of all 
those places which can't be gone to from anywhere by any route on any means of 
transportation -- the center of the Earth, say, pace Edgar Rice Burroughs).
Ideally (I think), unfilled places should be particular quantifiers, {zo'e} 
should be stated when a fixed, though perhaps unspecified, referent is intended.
While I'm at it, we should change {ce'u} over to a variable-binding operator so 
we can do abstractions right.

2. {lo broda} refers to a bunch of brodas (either an L-set or a plural 
reference, as your ontological conscience guides you), fixed by context but 
possibly not terribly specific. The bunch may have a single member or encompass 
all brodas that have ever been and maybe more (all in this universe of 
discourse, of course, though maybe not in this world).  These latter, maximal, 
bunches  represent brodakind for all practical purposes. Because of the 
transparency of bunches, such a bunch of brodas is also a bunch of kinds of 
brodas, etc.  These maximal bunches might usefully have a separate gadri.
Another bunch type which could use its own gadri is a mass, which can be viewed 
either as the kind parts of brodas which can still broda (atoms, molecules, 
cells, ....) or as constructed by going through all the parts of brodas, sorting 
out ones that are not broda and gathering the rest into the new bunch, to be 
further analyzed.
Some few problems remain: letters (though this can be made to fit in, if you 
don't mind considering all the even transient occurrences of a character in 
4-space), geometric figures, things with the order type of the reals, and so on 
(mainly mekso, so we can forget about them for another twenty years).

3. Bunches relate to predicates in a variety of ways, for none of which does 
Lojban have an explicit marker, though some can be inferred from other factors 
(quantifiers, modals -- though we are somewhat defective there as well, or maybe 
just more pragmatic or rhetorical devices -- I'm not sure what generalization or 
stereotype is).  I don't have a complete list and am unsure about the status of 
some I do have, so some discussion would be welcome.

4.  We need a way to sort out the official meaning (sense, a function on worlds) 
and the ordinary meaning, an area in in the web of  other meanings (probably not 
a spot in the Platonic tetrahedron anymore).  And then say which one we are 
talking about.

5.  I always told my students that, for me, memory is not a pramana, but tends 
to be spotty and self-aggrandizing, so I won't argue with Lojban about what I 
said twenty yeara ago; he has the records (but I bet he can't find 'em).  And, 
of course, I may well have changed my mind over the years.  But still I am 
shocked to think I ever was pleased with a modal "can and does".  The need for a 
logical necessity operator is less pressing that a variety of strong modals and 
their duals for the major kinds of compulsions (logic is rarely relevant except 
in the most hair-splitting arguments).  I am not sure about where they belong 
grammatically, but in Logic they function pretty much exactly like negation and 
tense.


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