Re: [lojban] semantic parser - tersmu-0.1rc1

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 12:29 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> To sum up one part of this discussion, if there is a variable (with or without a
> quantifier) in a compound predication,  it can only come from an underlying
> compound sentence of the form Qx(Fx X Gx) or something equivalent to that, which
> turns out to be just AxFx & AxGx) and ExFx v ExGx.  Other quantifiers cannot be
> collapsed at all.  Now, as to how situation is represented in Lojban, the only
> problem case is a plain {da} with a disjunctive predication.  But since this is
> equivalent to the (relatively) prenex form, the rule to use that prenex for all
> cases holds.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Consider for example:

(1)  ro nanla .e nai ro nixli pu citka su'o plise
 "Every boy and not every girl ate some apple."

My reading of that is:

(2)  ge ro da poi nanla su'o de poi plise zo'u da de citka gi na ku ro
da poi nixli su'o de poi plise zo'u da de citka
 "For every x who is a boy there is some y that is an apple such that
x ate y and it is not the case that for every x who is a girl there is
some y that is an apple such that x ate y."

You seem to be saying that it's either:

(3) su'o da poi plise zo'u ge ro de poi nanla zo'u de da citka gi na
ku ro de poi nixli zo'u de da citka
 "There is some x that is an apple such that for every y who is a boy,
y ate x and such that it is not the case that for every y who is a
girl y ate x."

or:

(4) ro da poi nanla ku'o ro de poi nixli ku'o su'o di poi plise zo'u
ge da di citka gi na ku zo'u de di citka
 "For every x who is a boy and every y who is a girl there is some z
that is an apple such that x ate z and it is not the case that y ate
z"

or perhaps:

(5) ro da poi nanla ku'o su'o de poi plise zo'u ge da de citka gi na
ku su'o di poi nixli zo'u di de citka
 "For every x who is a boy there is some y that is an apple such that
x ate y and it is not the case that for every z who is a girl z ate y"

You seem to be saying that "su'o plise" for some reason must have
scope over ".e", but I'm not sure where you would put "ro nanla" and
"ro nixli" with respect to ".e" (and thus with respect to "su'o
plise").

I hope we all agree that in "ro nanla cu citka su'o plise" it is "ro
nanla" that has scope over "su'o plise", so readings (3) and (5),
which make "su'o plise" have scope over at least one of the preceding
"ro", seem quite wrong to me. As for reading (4), with "ro nixli"
having scope over the negation, it's also weird.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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