Subject: Re: [lojban] tu'o usage

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 19:36:18 EDT

In a message dated 9/24/2002 11:47:27 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> So called "inner quantifiers" should be called "inner cardinality 
> indicators"
> -- just as PA does not always function as a quantifier (e.g. in {li pa}), 
> so 
> in {lo PA broda} it functions as an indicator of cardinality, not as a
> quantifier.
> 
> Negation boundaries affect all inner cardinality indicators, but since ro
> does not ascribe any cardinality to the set, it is vacuously affected.
>>
Just what does "affected" mean here? Obviously something different from 
quantifier DeMorgan, but what exactly. Where is a case of it (other than ro 
= ro) applied?

<<
Not. Because *everything* within a le- phrase IS presupposed -- that is
the very nature of le-. 
Huh? I guess we mean totally different things by "presupposed". What is 
referred to may not be literally as it is described, but that is not 
presupposition, only the vagaries of human humor (when it occurs -- it is not 
very common so far in Lojban or any other language I can think of). Even if 
thiis is presupposition, I haven't anywhere seen it suggested before that 
(always remembering that with me memory is not a pramana) the INNER was also 
subjectively defined.

<<
#That "all" has existential import. I guess I have to take back "linguists" 

#-- but, gee, my people (Partee, Bill Bright, various Lakoffs) and McCawley 
#had it right.

Does McCawley deal with it in _Everything linguists always wanted to
know about logic_?
Yes (I don't have my copy handy, so I can't give a citation). Right after he 
deals with the logicians' view (which he gets almost right -- he just doesn't 
note that the explicit quantifier in the quantified conditional form is 
importing), he remarks that the actual language situation is pretty clearly 
importing (though I don't think he uses that exppression) and gives some 
examples.

<<
I think that perhaps part of the issue concerns whether restricted 
quantification exists in Lojban -- whether {da poi broda cu brode} means
something different from {da ge broda gi brode}. I suspect you
would say that the former but not the latter entails {da broda}.
If I'm right about this, at least I can understand where you're coming
from, and will be in a position to think properly about the issues.
On the contrary, I would have to insist that these two are equivalent. At 
most I have a problem with {ro broda cu brode} or {ro da poi broda cu brode} 
and {ro da zo'u ganai d a broda gi da brode}. (As xorxes points out, it is 
really only A --- and maybe occasionally O -- and maybe even more 
occasionally E -- that is a problem).

<<
Everybody groups "every" and "each" together separate from "all", because
the former are distributive: "Every thing is", "Each (thing) is", "All 
(things) are".
But you just didn't, although the question was not about distribution. I 
suppose that one source of the typical (but hardly universal, obviously) 
tendency to take "each" and "every" as importing is the difficulty of 
imagining distribution in a null set.

<<
If you can give me references on the importingness of "all" and "every" I
will go and look them up. I am skeptical about there being dialect 
differences,
but I shouldn't prejudge.
The loc class is Zeno Vendler, "Each and Every, Any and All" Mind, v.71 
(April 1962), pp 145 - 160. This is reprinted in a collection Vendler's 
papers, information on which I can't find (I'll sure be glad when I have used 
my "organized" library enought that I can start finding thing in it again). 
The results are summarized in a section "Any and All" in the Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy v1 pp 131-3 in the first edition. Vendler there cites a number of 
other sources, including somewhat linguistic ones like Klima "Negation in 
English" in Fodor and Katz.

<<
#I don't follow the formula, I think. Suppose that P presupposes Q. Then 
the 
#whole situation is "P funny-and Q." 

At a presyntactic/prelexical level I think it is "P and I-HEREBY-ASSERT Q"
I would have put it pretty much tother way round, since I do not assert Q in 
this situation, only P and Q is there to allow me to do that assertion (or 
denial for that matter).

<<
#Negating this would be "not P funny-and Q," 

Polishly "funny-and Q not P", not "not funny-and Q P", I take it you mean.
Yes; I am careful about my binders when not writing Polish.

<<
#{na'i}ing it would be either "not(P and Q)" ("and" not at all funny) or 
(better) 
#"not Q whether P" ("whether" = Lojban {u}). 

The former would Griceanly imply the latter.
It does so in any case, since "not Q" entails "Either not P or not Q", i.e. 
"not (P and Q). The second is better precisely because it contains more 
information.

<<
Can you cite some of the many cases of the presupposing version without
ro?
Not in any normal sense (there is no standard location to cite from), but any 
case with a specific INNER that is not changed by negation passage will do.