Subject: Re: [lojban] go'i: repeated referents or just sumti?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 19:56:33 EST

In a message dated 2/26/2002 5:11:20 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> "all of all" does not add information, on the contrary, it loses
> information, at least if you agree with me that "all" does not
> have existential import.
> 
Which hopefully nobody does (even you really). While "all" is arguable, 
"every," which is what {ro} means, clearly does have existential import. The 
question is "Of what?" When there is a variable present, on the range of the 
variables is guranteed non-empty, the restriction to a "subject term" does 
not guarantee that the subject term is non-empty. When there are no 
variables, then the subject term -- which now is part of the quantifier -- is 
guaranteed non-empty. The latter seems to be the case here.
I know your counter argument involves moving negations back and forth over 
quantifiers, but from that point of view the quantifiers we have are 
seriously defective. The cheapest way to fix it would be to distinguish 
between quantifiers with and without variables, but in the natural way that 
leads to very odd things, like a free {da} without existential import -- or 
{lo} with the same problem. In any case, the basic idea is that negation 
transport changes from one class of quantifiers to the other. Since we have 
not distinguished (very throroughly), we could not specify the details 
before.