* Saturday, 2014-10-04 at 13:33 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> > * Sunday, 2014-09-28 at 21:17 -0300 - Jorge Llambías:
> > > On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > > Should we allow for the possibility that "brode" is not
> > > distributive over the brodas?
> > > Something like:
> > > su'o da poi plini zi'e noi so'i so'i mei cu terdi
> > I think it's a reasonable rule that since {su'o} is a singular
> > quantifier, the implicit relative variable in the noi clause refers
> > to a singular variable. That would rule out this kind of thing.
>
> My current thinking is that variables are not singular or plural, it's just
> the quantifiers that bind them that can be singular or plural, and singular
> and plural quantifiers can both have the same domain.
>
> The noi there is still weird, but in "PA da poi broda zi'e noi brode cu
> brodi", it should make no difference what PA is, since in all cases the
> domain of quantification would be the same, and the members of that
> implicit domain seem to be the only things available for the noi close to
> be about. Also, since it's always possible to force a distributive reading
> with "noi ro ke'a ...", I would not make it a part of "noi" itself.
So am I interpreting you correctly as suggesting that when we have
a claim involving an unbound variable, e.g. that generated by {da poi
broda zi'e noi brode}, we should deal with the unbound variable not by
universally quantifying over brodaers but rather by replacing the
variable with a constant whose referents are the brodaers?
If so, how about something like
{su'oi tadni poi sruri su'o dinju zi'e noi darlu simxu}
, in a context where there are many buildings being surrounded by
various (possibly intersecting) groups of students?
Would you have the side-claim being that all the students involved in
surrounding any building argue, or only that each group of students
which surrounds a building argues? The latter seems more natural to me.
Martin
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