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

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 14:59:28 -0400

On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 10:10:32AM -0500, Jordan DeLong wrote:

> Furthermore, though the word order leads to different likely interpretation
> it doesn't change the possible meanings.
> ro da prami de
> Can mean "Everyone loves >=one other (the same) person" just as much as it
> can mean "Everyone loves someone (else)".

In fact it means neither: it means "Everyone loves some person(s), possibly
different person(s) for each or even themselves." When sumti appear in a
bridi with no prenex, their scope is uniformly left-to-right.

Unless you mean that the Lojban statement is entailed by either English
sentence, which is certainly true.

> I was discussing this point with some people on IRC a while back, and
> bunk I say! bunk! Of course unicorns exist: they're concepts. 

Not at all. The concept of a unicorn is a concept, and it exists, just
as the concept of a horse exists. Otherwise we are in the position of
saying that horses are animals, but unicorns are concepts, which is very ugly.

> I say {mi djica lenu lo pavyseljirna cu klama ti} there's nothing wrong
> with the bridi, as I really do desire that su'o lo ro pavyseljirna
> come (even if ro = 0; the su'o is just the number I'm wanting).

There *is* nothing wrong, because nu-events exist even if the things inside
don't. But lo pavyseljirna cu blabi, "some unicorn is white", that's
rubbish.

> Additionally, certainly you can dream a unicorn klama do, as unicorns
> *do* exist in dreams. With:
> da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi senva ledu'u da klama mi
> says "there is a unicorn such that I dreamt it came to me". 

That claim is false. A true claim would be:

mi senva ledu'u lo pavyseljirna da klama mi

which puts the unicorn firmly inside the context of a proposition.

(Here comes Bernard J. Ortcutt, pillar of the community and possible spy.)

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked] www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders."
--Hal Abelson