Subject: Re: [lojban] tu'o again (was: the set of answers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 17:47:28 EDT

In a message dated 9/8/2001 4:28:30 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> But now you have raised additional questions. The way you use tu'o:
> 
> a. It certainly includes existence, no?
> 
> b. Isn't it "making a true but additional and unnecessary claim that the
> cardinality is 1."?
> 
> I don't know why the dynamics of tu'o and pa are so different. They are
> the same selma'o.
> 

As near as I can follow all this, the point about {tu'o} is that, as an overt 
quantifier. it excludes any covert quantifiers or gadri and thus, in 
particular excludes the existential quantifier, which generates problems of 
various sorts (as it does, but not as many as the universal -- or some 
others). It also excludes the need to say {pa}, which is obvious in these 
cases. So it does not function differently, it just expresses it 
differently, with a resulting simplification at some depth of analysis.
As for joining {pa} in PA, look at how differently {pa} behaves from {su'o} 
(string v. non-string, used with decinmals v. not, etc.); all these things 
are grammatical but some are nonsenisical (so far as we know now, any how).