la .dan. cu cusku di'e
> Using zo'e directly is obviously fruitless since xorlo seems to
> influence how both zo'e, and how noi work: together they remove our abilities to
> explicitly talk about individuals.
I don't think {noi} changed at all. {zo'e} allows plural reference, but that isn't new either.
> This make me assume that it also affects the
> da-family, so {pa xanto} is also out of the question.
This comes down to whether or not {da} allows for plural variables. Since plural reference is so common in Lojban, it would make sense for {da} to also allow plural variables, but singular variables also have advantages.
Imagine {za'a lo ci xanto cu va cadzu} to set the context. Now, it all depends on on {da}'s plurality what {da va cadzu} can mean. Clearly, we just saw that {lo ci xanto} is a cadzu1, so it should be a possible value for the {da}. The downside to this is that with plural variables,
the one X in {pa lo ci xanto} could be all three elephants (although a distributive handling of {me}'s x1 could fix that, or in other words, by saying that {mi'o na me mi'o}), whereas singular variables could only pick out an individual elephant from {lo ci xanto}.
So singular variables are simpler and avoid certain problems, like the {pa xanto} one. On the other hand, it would mean that we can't say {da simxu lo ka prami} for "There are some X who love each other", and we'd have to use more complicated mechanisms for that, like {da poi su'o mei cu simxu lo ka prami} (which isn't *that* bad).
Personally I would be all but opposed to the idea of having plural variables to along with the plural reference while keeping the simplicity of singular quantification, but I probably can't have my cake and eat it, too. I would not want two sets of quantifers, for eaxmple. Another idea would be to have each selbri place decide if it's distributive or
not, but I'm not sure I like that very much. So the more practical solution right now seems to be to stick with singular variables, even though it breaks the {simxu} example above and can sometimes be counter-intuitive in a language full of plural reference.
mi'e la selpa'i mu'o
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