Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] Quantifiers, Existential Import, and all that stuff

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 09:21:32 EST

In a message dated 3/7/2002 8:51:14 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I am tired of agreeing with you that {[su'o] lo su'o broda} is the
> same as {[su'o] lo ro broda}. Both give rise to I+. We agree there.
> 
> That in no way means that {ro lo su'o broda} is the same as
> {ro lo ro broda}. In my system they are not the same.
> 

I am talking about Lojban, not about your system. You can have any system 
you want, but stop claiming it is Lojban; that is confusing to other people.

<Since I have never accepted your correction, you should not keep
speaking as if I had. If you want, you can say that we use
the word {ro} with different meanings. At least I don't read
what you say as if you were using it with my meaning, which
is what you keep doing to me and which so exasperates me.
I can understand it you doing it once or twice, but not every
time again and again. If you can't accept that the way I'm
using {ro} is reasonable, that's ok. I only ask that you don't
continue as if I had accepted your meaning and then interpret
what I say in your terms, because obviously that won't reflect
my intentions.>

I certainly never thought nor claimed that you had accepted the correction. 
We are using the word {ro} with different meanings -- the one it has in 
Lojban versus the one it has in Llamban. My only point is tha, if you are 
speaking of Lojban on the Lojban list, it is at least a courtesy to talk 
about and use the Lojban meaning. I misread wht you say because I read it 
as Lojban, which hardly seems inapporpriate on the Lojban list. I do not see 
a reason here to learn and remember every erratic craziness of various people 
in their attempts to deal with Loojban. I do hope that they wil eventually 
get it right and I just keep pointing out to them that they aren't there yet.
I am not sure whether your use of {ro} is reasonable or not -- I think it 
could lead to some messy problems as it does in Empty Universe Logics, but I 
am sure that it is not Lojban and that is the re,evant question.

<And I have never disagreed with that. Remember that {lo broda}
is an abbreviation for {su'o lo broda}. But {no lo broda} or
{ro lo broda} are different beasts which don't involve
{[su'o] lo broda}, despite superficial appearances.>

I'm afraid that, even within your strange context, this doesn't make much 
sense. {lo broda} does not change its meaning depending on what quantifier 
we put in front of it. the whole phrase changes its meaning of course, 
because we take different chunks of its referent out: but the referent 
remains the same: the non-empty set of all the broda.

<We have no disagreement about {su'o lo broda}.>

We do though. You seem (and, indeed, have said, I think) that its existential 
import comes only from the initial {su'o}; I think it is there already in {lo 
broda}.

<A- ro [lo ro] broda
E- no [lo ro] broda
I+ su'o [lo ro] broda = su'o lo su'o broda
O+ me'iro [lo ro] broda = me'iro lo su'o broda

A+ ro lo su'o broda
E+ no lo su'o broda
I- naku no lo su'o broda
O- naku ro lo su'o broda

The first four are what I believe you called the "modern"
system. The particular rules of abbreviation in Lojban
would allow to say those four most compactly.

You may not like this way of doing it, but I don't think it
is inconsistent. If you find an inconsistency please point
it out. To me it is the most intuitive, and it allows to write
any of the four quantifiers in terms of each of the others:

ro broda = no broda naku (= da'ano broda)
= naku me'iro broda
= naku su'o broda naku (= naku da'asu'o broda)

no broda = ro broda naku (= da'aro broda)
= naku su'o broda
= naku me'iro broda naku (= naku da'ame'iro broda)

su'o broda = me'iro broda naku (= da'ame'iro broda)
= naku no broda
= naku ro broda naku (= naku da'aro broda)

me'iro broda = su'o broda naku (= da'asu'o broda)
= naku ro broda
= naku no broda naku (= naku da'asu'o broda)>

Yes, this is consistent and convenient. It does favor the "modern" 
interpretation, which is probably not the one that should be favored in a 
useful language and certainly is not the one that Lojban favors (when it is 
coherent, which it occasionally is not). Its a very pretty system, too, and 
points out that some works needs to be on the Lojban system to make it as 
pretty. Perhaps we can borrow from you; would that encourage you to join us?

<There are of course parallel relationships involving the other four,
but many of them are defective because we already use {naku} to
represent I- and O- (something which as I understand it you don't
object to, because your only problem is with the way I do A- and E-).>

Yes, the Lojban system share the problems with I- and O- and tries to 
represent the import character of each quantifier in a different way (based 
upon the domain be quantified over) and so does these thing differently. The 
problems with your system are not restricted to A- and E- but come from its 
underlying presuppositions: that {ro} is comptible with {no} rather than 
entailing {su'o} and that the domain quantified over is always the one 
mentioned as subject in the English (or Spanish). Both of these go against 
the logical practices upon which Lojban was built.