On Sunday, September 28, 2014 11:02:52 AM UTC-4, la gleki wrote:
Not really. First off, there's nothing like a definition of a term that uses the term to define itself ;-)
poi'i: x1 is such that poi'i abstraction is true; x1 binds ke'a within the abstraction.
So please help me understand. It is a NU so what kind of abstraction is it? It's not an event, or a property, or a truth-value, etc. What kind? As far as I can tell it is not an abstraction at all, but a clause like {poi}, or in some examples {noi}, or perhaps a generic {su'u}. The term prenex is being used a lot here too, and I get the feeling the answer I might get is that it is a "prenex abstractor". But what does that mean? A way to talk about prenexes? e.g. "the prenex, all dogs, is ..." but that's not how the examples are, so that's not it. I don't get it.
Let's take one of the examples:
mi poi'i ke'a viska ke'a - I see myself.
That doesn't look like an abstraction, it looks like a relative clause. And in this case an incidental one. So how is that different from:
mi noi ke'a viska ke'a - I, who (incidentally) I see.
Take another example:
le poi'i ke'a viska ke'a - the ones who see themselves
So that at least looks like an abstraction. But why can't we just say,
le poi ke'a viska ke'a