Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: paroi ro mentu

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 16:41:57 +0000

Here's another argument on why {paroi ro mentu} has to mean
"once per minute" and not "once in an interval that contains
every minute":

As a general rule, we want {broda <tag> ko'a e ko'e} to expand
to {broda <tag> ko'a ije broda <tag> ko'e}. I don't think we
want tags that explicitly contain quantifiers to break this
rule, so {mi klama le zarci paroi le pavdei e le reldei} means
"I went to the market once on Monday and I went to the market
once on Tuesday" (or was it Sunday and Monday?), it does not mean
that I went once on the sum of Monday and Tuesday. To get that
meaning we have to say {mi klama le zarci paroi le pavdei ku joi
le reldei}, "I went once in the Monday-Tuesday period".

If we accept that {e} must expand as usual even with quantified
tags, then the same must apply to quantified sumti, since the
quantifier {ro} corresponds closely to the connective {e} for
these purposes: {mi klama le zarci paroi ro le re djedi}, "I went
to the market once on each of the two days". To say that I went
once in the two-day period we can say {mi klama le zarci paroi lei
re djedi}, which corresponds to {le pavdei ku joi le reldei}, or
in this case we can also say {mi klama paroi le djedi be li re}.

Conclusion: the quantifier of a tagged sumti always has scope over
the quantifier within its tag, even though the latter appears first
in the expression. Otherwise, these tags would have perverse and
unwanted effects on logical connectives.

A different issue altogether is the interaction of quantified
tags with other than its own sumti. In this case we can have:
{mi klama paroiku la paris e la romas}. This expands to
{paroiku zo'u ge mi klama la paris gi mi klama la romas}
"Exactly once, I went to Paris and I went to Rome."
I have no idea if from that we can further expand to {mi klama
paroiku la paris ije mi klama paroiku la romas}, "I went to Paris
exactly once and I went to Rome exactly once", I think we shouldn't.
Depending on how this goes, then tags will or will not have scope
over quantifiers of following sumti other than its own.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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