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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 19:26:53 EST

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

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

The kindest thing to say about 16.9 (401) and 16.11 (405) is that they were 
done without thinking about the existential import problem (and without 
paying attention to what people were doing already -- so much for "let usage 
decide"), Actually, since 16.9 is all about unrestricted quantifiers, the 
question doesn't arise: the domain is always non-null, so the simplest 
conversions occur. I suspect this got stuck in Cowan's mind when he got to 
16.11 and restricted quantifiers of some sort or other. I suppose it is 
possible that {ro da poi} and {su'o da poi} have opposite import (I suppose 
A- and I+) but I don't see any evidence that this is what was intended (or 
even thought of). Is that where you got your stange mixes of types? The 
identification of {su'o da poi broda} with {su'o broda} appears to back up 
the I+ identification; the identification of {ro da poi broda} with {ro 
broda} goes against it, but does support the hypotheses that 1) {da poi} 
belongs in + and 2) 16.11 forgot about import. 
Well, for wha it is worth, I seem to have the book's backing for my preferred 
system, but, as noted, I have reason to believe that, like a tidy way of 
dealing with {ce'u}, it will not fly.