Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Quantifiers, Esistential Import, etc.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 16:15:08 EST

In a message dated 3/9/2002 12:49:42 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> This does have regularity, but it makes transformations
> complicated. For example, {naku ro broda} goes to
> {su'o da poi broda naku} instead of just {su'o broda naku},
> and so on.
> 

Sure, because the denial of an importing quantifier is a free one (but you 
don't need the {su'o} in the second). This is a regular feature of all the 
DeMorgan's in this system -- with the convenience that you can tell at a 
glance whether an expression is importing or not ({lo broda} v. {da poi})

<The Book has {ro da poi broda cu brode} for A+ (pg 399), which
goes against both our systems>

I have complained about that passage -- and a couple of others of the same 
sort -- since before the book came out. With my usual success, of course 
(obviously). It's bad logic and worse Lojban. Unless, of course, it were 
taken to mean that {da poi} was also +, which it clearly is not in other 
places and certainly in common practice.

<it allows all the transformations
that my system allows (section starting on page 405).>

Does mine miss any (in content, form is screwed up a bit here)? 

<It also says
explicitly that {su'o da poi verba naku klama su'o de poi ckule}
is identical in meaning to {su'o verba naku klama su'o ckule},
which is what my system allows, but not yours.>

Yes, I have had to fiddle a bit with the meaning of {da poi} -- a meaning 
that was not very clearly worked out anyhow, as witness your example on 399 
in contrast with several other cases. I admit that, when I started this, I 
had hopes of keeping {da poi} on the + side and making all the - go over to 
{ganai gi}, but a bit of water-testing assured me this would never fly -- in 
spite of 399 and the other places. I would be more than happy to go to that 
system if I thought I could get away with it among the users. The present 
one is a compromise keeping as much as makes good use of the usual material 
without doing too much damage to bad habits people (including Central) have 
picked up.