Subject: Re: [lojban] More about quantifiers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 13:53:50 EST

In a message dated 3/12/2002 12:18:36 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> The {lo su'o broda} forms in my system are just convenient
> shortcuts. The full fledged forms will add {ganai da broda gi}
> in front of the corresponding + form.
> 

Now that is mucky. But it saves you yet another rule although at extreme 
cost.

<The "exchange {Q da poi broda} and {Q broda}" bit is the ugly
step for me. When {broda} is a complex bridi, this may mean
adding lots of be-bei's and possibly having to do internal
rearrangments if {ke'a} is not the first sumti. It sounds like
a simple rule, but in practice it is not. It removes the
freedom to use the {poi} form as a stylistic variant, which
is all it is in my version.>

The predicate sumti - description sumti interchange is pretty automatic; 
shifting order would be a bit more complicated, but still falls under a 
straightforward rule. It may call for some further work. Or, if it gets to 
awful, we can leave the negation form unreduced, as you do in two cases.

<>I think that extra effort is worth it to be able to tell
>at a glance that a setence has existential import.

I'm not sure it buys you even that. Just hide a negation a
bit and at least for me it is not something you can tell at
a glance:

no broda me'iro da poi brode cu brodi

Does that have existential import for brode? Can you really
tell at a glance?>

You have constructed a case where I have to stop and think a bit. But in 
your system, I always have to stop and think -- in fact recall the whole 
table to figure where this form fits in. To be sure, the prefixes forms 
would help, but are unwieldy (to be polite).