Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 11:49:52 EDT

In a message dated 8/20/2002 9:46:09 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> >If you say {le} at this point, the fair
> >question is "which ones are those?" since you have some particular ones in
> >mind. So, it is safer to say {lo}, some but unspecified.
> 
> If he likes that he is eating chocolate once in his life, he could
> say {mi nelci lo zu'o mi citka loi cakla}. Surely he wants
> to claim more than that?
> >>
> 
Not necessarily, but he is not restricted in this way either: "some" is not 
"one" (but it isn't "more than one" either). And, of course, we don't want 
"all" or even "all the ones that actually occurred". An the other hand, we 
can assume -- and I think {lo} implicates this -- that he has actually been 
in a few of these events at least and enjoyed them, so the existential 
conditions are met. And may yet be met by future case -- or maybe not. What 
else may be implied is probably covered by some tense-like critter: {ta'e} or 
{so'eroi} spring to mind.

<<
But the problem here is that events, like objects (but unlike
facts probably), should be treated extensionally with le/lo.
So while you have taken care of the quantification over
chocolates, you are still left with a quantification over
events of eating chocolate. We want to refer to such events
intensionally, generically, we don't want a quantifier that
runs over all such events.
This is not at all obvious; it may be sufficient to note the actual cases, 
past, present, and future. And not even all of them, of course.
Facts, being propositions, are as quantifiable as things or events. In 
Lojban, all of then exist, whether or not they obtain.