Re: [lojban] Quantifier exactness

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 5:33 AM, Felipe Gonçalves Assis <felipeg.assis@gmail.com> wrote:

What is lacking here is the argument /for/ quantifier inexactness,
which goes against CLL.

Much as I like quantifier exactness as a useful idiosyncrasy in lojban (and view adhering to the CLL) as a good default, I find the example given as an argument /against/ quantifier exactness (though not an entirely convincing one by itself), at least if I take latros's analysis at face value.

The sentence says to me "I, more than you, like one of the two people." Unless you can give me an intuition for a translation that preserves exact quantifier semantics (and just adding "exactly" to the previous statement doesn't do it), I'm going to be uneasy about them.

On 7 January 2013 01:15, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:

> ...Actually, both of the above situations are the same. {ci prenu cu zvati
> lo zdani} when 5 are present is an "inexact quantifier", but it can be
> sneakily worked around by playing with the universe of discourse (i.e. we're
> excluding them from the discussion). There's no such workaround in the first
> example, because the quantifier range is explicit.
>

The analysis of "There are three people in the house" has always been
{su'o ci prenu cu
zvati lo zdani}, as far as I know. The "probably just about three"
part comes naturally as a
pragmatic effect of scalar implicature: if more than three relevant
people are known to be
on the house, the speaker would have mentioned that.

mu'o
mi'e .asiz.

Jan 6, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Not {su'o}, no. Instead it's more like "at least one, and probably about
>> one." As for the example, trivial examples don't really help (since the
>> issue could basically be left up in the air and trivial cases would still be
>> resolvable in context), while universe-of-discourse-based examples seem
>> pedantic at best.
>>
>> mi'e la latro'a mu'o
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Felipe Gonçalves Assis
>> <felipeg.assis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean by "inexact quantifers". Do you mean
>>> that {pa}
>>> should be understood as {su'o}? I don't see why that is necessary, or why
>>> you
>>> would need such a convoluted example to exemplify the different
>>> interpretations.
>>>
>>> mu'o
>>> mi'e .asiz.
>>>
>>> On 6 January 2013 15:59, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > The issue of quantifier exactness has come up a few times already. The
>>> > most
>>> > recent example was "context and precision" which was forked by aionys
>>> > from
>>> > another thread. You can look at that thread On IRC today, playing
>>> > around
>>> > with functions we stumbled upon a combination of a sentence and
>>> > situation
>>> > such that one stance on quantifier exactness makes the sentence false
>>> > while
>>> > the other makes it true. Here's the setup:
>>> >
>>> > There are 4 people, mi, do, la alis, la bab; the latter two are grouped
>>> > under {lo re prenu}.
>>> > I like la alis a little bit, but hate la bab.
>>> > You like la alis and la bab a lot.
>>> > Now consider
>>> > {mi zmadu do lo ni ce'u nelci pa lo re prenu}
>>> > (If the ni confuses you, pretend it's ka, as that part's not important
>>> > here.
>>> > We can talk about ka-ni elsewhere.)
>>> >
>>> > If quantifiers are exact, this is true. {do nelci pa lo re prenu} is
>>> > completely false (you like two of them, not one), while {mi nelci pa lo
>>> > re
>>> > prenu} is true, if only a little bit, so I do exceed you in that
>>> > aspect.
>>> > Note that the CLL says this is how the language works, but if you look
>>> > at
>>> > the previous discussions you'll find that this is clumsy fairly
>>> > frequently.
>>> > If quantifiers are not exact, this is false or at least false-ish,
>>> > since {ro
>>> > da poi me lo re prenu zo'u do zmadu mi lo ni ce'u nelci da}.
>>> >
>>> > I thought this example warranted discussion primarily because it does
>>> > not
>>> > arise because of annoying, semi-ontological issues related to the
>>> > universe
>>> > of discourse. Instead there's only two people being quantified over,
>>> > but the
>>> > two interpretations still differ with respect to this (relatively
>>> > simple)
>>> > sentence.
>>> >
>>> > .i do ma jinvi
>>> >
>>> > .i mi'e la latro'a mu'o
>>> >
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>>
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