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Re: [lojban] Second-order quantification has uses



On 2021-01-13 20:59, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

On 1/8/21 1:17 PM, Corbin Simpson wrote:
coi

I wanted to follow up on a point of la tsani's from the thread "Reasoning by analogy". The point is raised that perhaps {bu'a} is not very useful.

I think I recall (the?) one time I felt a use for {bu'a}, but I did have to have it explained to me that {ro bu'a zo'u} doesn't mean "for all things that bu'a" but rather "for all predicates bu'a," which is an exception to the usual rules—precisely because otherwise it's hard to use {bu'a}!


Esther 8:1: "For she (Esther) had told him (Ahasuerus) what he (Mordecai) was to her [viz. her cousin]"


.i .ebu pu cusku fi .abu fe lo du'u my bu'akau .ebu


I guess it doesn't need the quantification after all (this originally occurred to me before the invention of {kau}, I think.)  Does there need to be some quantification anyway, though?  To mean some particular implied (ellipsized) relationship, and not some random one like {viska} or {te djuno} or something?


For these kinds of "you're free to be as you are" type of statements, I actually think there's a connection to indirect questions. In a sense, there is a hidden indirect question when we say "as you are", since it appears in a subclause and we're not actually _saying_ what "as you are" is supposed to be. It's kind of like saying "tell me who I am".


So in Lojban:

.i do zifre lo ka mokau


Or to rephrase your example:

.i .ebu pu cusku fi .abu fe lo du'u my .ebu mokau


.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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