* Saturday, 2014-09-06 at 14:41 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> > if
> > {ko'a poi broda} is a referring expression in itself, one might expect
> > {ro ko'a poi broda} to mean
> > (1) {ro da poi me ko'a poi broda},
> > but instead we have a separate rule which makes it
> > (2) {ro da poi me ko'a gi'e broda},
> > and (1) and (2) agree only in case (iv).
> >
> > They almost agree in case (v), and I'm tempted to amend case (v)
> > to have it give {ro ko'a poi broda} meaning (1) rather than meaning (2).
>
> I do think (1) is right and (2) is just a special case. The BPFK formal
> definition has (2), but I think that was just an oversight, not fully
> considering non-distributive predicates. The general definition suggests
> it's (1). With the assignment "ko'a goi lo tadni" for example, I wouldn't
> have a problem with "no ko'a poi pu sruri lo dinju ba se sfasa" being
> meaningful.
I think you must be right about this.
I'm still not wholly happy with {ko'a poi broda} -> {zo'e noi me ko'a
gi'e broda}, but I'll accept it for now.
> > I'd say the bracketed phrase there has an unbound
> > ("donkey") variable, and we should either consider it an error or
> > universally quantify it out to give
> > {PA broda noi brode} -> {PA da poi broda zi'e noi brode}
> > -> {to da brode toi PA da poi broda} *
> > -> {to ro da brode toi PA da poi broda}
> > or, perhaps, remembering the domain of the variable and only universally
> > quantifying over that, giving
> > {to ro da poi broda brode toi PA da poi broda} ;
> > but that's a bit of a pain in practice, since the clause giving the
> > domain could itself mention unbound variables, and you have to recurse.
>
> "PA broda noi brode" and "PA da noi brode" are just weird, since they don't
> provide any referents for the relative clause to be about. They're almost
> as bad as "zi'o noi brode". When they are used it's because we are thinking
> of quantifiers as determiners rather than as pure quantifiers.
Yes, weird, and probably mistakes. Really the reason I want to handle
them as described above is because it fits nicely with the "Skolem
function" approach to handling externally bound variables in
a description clause, as in
{ro da broda lo brodi be da}
-> {ro da broda zo'e noi brodi da}
-> {to cy brodi da toi
ro da broda cy} *
-> {to ro da li ma'o fy mo'e da brodi toi
ro da broda li ma'o fy mo'e da}
(and again, if it had been {ro da poi brodu cu broda zo'e noi brodi da},
maybe the quantifier in the bracket should really have domain brodu(_)
too). Not really relevant.
Martin
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