Subject: Re: [lojban] More about quantifiers

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 20:09:21

la pycyn cusku di'e

><
> 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.

{me'iro} is hard to think about. I wonder whether there's no
simple word for it because it is hard, or whether it is hard
because there's no simple word for it... Probably the first.

Anyway, here's what I do to understand what it says:
First introduce a {naku naku} between the two terms:

no broda naku naku me'iro da poi brode cu brodi

Now, {no broda naku} reduces to {ro broda} in both our
systems (not in Aristotle's though). And {naku me'iro da
poi brode} is any of {ro brode} or {ro da poi brode} in
my system, and I think {ro brode} in yours. That means
it reduces in both systems to:

ro broda ro brode cu brodi

This is right, "no broda is a brodi to not all brode"
is the same as "all broda are brodi to all brode".

So, in my system it has import for neither broda nor
brode, while in your system it has import for both. Did
having the form {no broda me'iro da poi brode cu brodi}
really help with that?

Let's consider this other case:

su'o broda su'o brode cu brodi

which has import for both of us. We can be nasty and rewrite
it as:

su'o broda naku naku su'o brode cu brodi

For me {su'o broda naku} is {me'iro broda} and
{naku su'o brode} is {no brode}. For you they are
{me'iro broda} and {no da poi brode}. We then have:

me'iro broda no da poi brode cu broda

"Some broda is brodi to some brode" = "Not all broda
are brodi to no brode". Sounds correct.

We can see that your import rule only works for the
first term. The second term gets the opposite
import than what one might naively assume from your
rules.

>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).

I am very comfortable with making transformations in my
system, but making any transformation in yours almost always
gives me a headache, so I will keep using mine. You can use
yours and call it official (though it departs from the
Book about as much as mine does), and we'll just have to
take the risk that if we ever communicate in Lojban we
might in some marginal case misunderstand each other. (Not
that this would be anything new.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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