Subject: [lojban] Re: What the heck is this crap?

From: Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 21:34:42 -0600

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 05:41:01PM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
[...]
> > > ca ro djedi lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> > > lo nanmu ca ro djedi cu cinba la meris
[...]
> > > ca le nu broda kei lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> > > lo nanmu ca le nu broda kei cu cinba la meris
> > [...]
> > > And pretty much everyone on jboske seems to agree with it. I don't
> > > normally read jboske, myself; xod pointed this out to me.
> > 
> > Believe it or not, I agree with the jboskeists on this.
> 
> For *both* of them, or just tho one with ca ro?

When we say le broda, if we're only talking about only one broda
this quantifier stuff can be ignored (if the inner quantifier is
pa, the outer ro will mean 1). If talking about more however, the
meaning will change when you move quantifiers across it. AndR said
something to this effect in another branch of the thread.

[...]
> > So the examples robin gives are in fact different -- moving them
> > changes the meaning because the quantifiers move.
> 
> Only the first two; your trick only works with lo, yes? And there's
> only one lo in the second example, so there should be no special
> interactions, I don't think.

The quantifier scope part is the important part. In chapter 16 it
says quantifiers scope left-to-right, except for when you use
termsets in the prenex, which makes them equal scope. I specifically
addressed the PA lo broda =? PA da poi broda because we were talking
about it on irc, and it allows reducing the first one to be as
simple as things which have explicit examples in the book (instead
of just a general rule).

For "le broda", the book never (to my knowledge) sets it equivalent
to anything, so we can't do that 'trick'. I think it's clear that
its (outer) quantifiers scope in the same manner though. There's
probably some way to turn le broda into a simple quantified variable
using voi though (which btw, is a much underused cmavo), it's just
not something which is defined as part of the language.

> > pe'i this is all book lojban, though perhaps slightly hard to grok
> > from the pages.
> 
> "Slightly hard" is a massive understatement.
> 
> This means that FA and SE can both change the actual meaning of
> sentences.
> 
> This is not explicitely stated anywhere, except maybe briefly in Chapter
> 16, whereas it is apparently something that needs to be kept in mind at
> all times.
> 
> I repeat my request for an errata.

I agree-sorta; I think the introductory lessons for lojban should
include an explaination of quantifier scope (perhaps I'll write
some learning foo which explains quantifier scope and such) and
that this stuff should've been clearer in the book.

Specifically, as you mention, in the sections on FA and SE the book
very clearly tries to make it sound like there is no change other
than order. This is technically true, because order is the reason
the quantifier scopes change, but it definitely can be misleading.

mu'o
-- 
Jordan DeLong - [email-masked]
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku