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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 14:34:30 EST

In a message dated 3/8/2002 10:02:24 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> But in my system the reference is the set of broda, whether empty
> or not, so the system is not inconsistent and it does make sense.
> Could {lo'i broda} refer to the empty set in real Lojban?
> 

Yes, {lo'i broda} can refer to the empty set, but then {lo broda} is a 
meaningless expression, since it presupposes that lo'i broda is not an empty 
set. Actually, the official line is that if lo'i broda is the empty set, the 
use of {lo broda} transports the discourse to being about an alternate world 
in which loi broda is not empty.

<Then we're not in disagreement. That's all I have been claiming,
that it is a consistent and convenient system. That's how I use
Lojban. If you feel that this is too much of a deviation from
real Lojban then you're welcome to say that I'm speaking a
different language.>

OK. You're speaking a different language. But doing it on a Lojban list and 
using a vocabulary that is almost identical to Lojban is very misleading and 
annoying. Since this not a monitored list, I don't suppose that you can be 
stopped from doing this. Nor do I think that anyone would want to, since, 
aside from an occasional aberration like this and main clause {kau}, what you 
write is some of the best Lojban around (even though it turns out on 
inspection not to be Lojban at all).

<Could you explain how the domain quantified over is not always
the one mentioned as subject? When is it not?>

Well, the short answer is (surprise!) when the quantified expression does not 
have existential import. But that is, in this context, circular and in any 
context not completely accurate. The longer answer is, when quantification 
is at some level attached to a representation of the unnamed universal class, 
rather than to a presentation of a subset. So, in particular, when Lojban 
has {ro da} the quantification is over the universal set, which {da} 
represents, not over whatever might come after it, which is the subject in 
English and Spanish (and...). We are, in these cases, talking about 
everything there is (in a perhaps conventionally restricted universe of 
discourse), as opposed to {ro lo broda} where we are just talking about 
brodas. (The exception about existential import is, of course, just about 
anything other than {ro} and something like {broda je brode})

BTW, I think I may have been overhasty in accepting some of your suggestions 
for expressions in the Lojban system, but that problem is minor compared to 
this one.