From a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Wed Jan 22 19:41:56 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@lycos.co.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 23 Jan 2003 03:41:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 43605 invoked from network); 23 Jan 2003 03:41:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m15.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 23 Jan 2003 03:41:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lmsmtp01.st1.spray.net) (212.78.202.111) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 23 Jan 2003 03:41:55 -0000 Received: from oemcomputer (host81-7-57-224.surfport24.v21.co.uk [81.7.57.224]) by lmsmtp01.st1.spray.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2ECB1E788 for ; Thu, 23 Jan 2003 04:41:53 +0100 (MET) To: "Lojban@Yahoogroups. Com" Subject: RE: [lojban] za'e "postnex" Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 03:41:53 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=122260811 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Martin Bays: > Is there a nice way to quantify over variables "in afterthought"? > > It's the kind of thing you see in (informal) mathematics all the time - > it's often natural to assume your variables are arbitrary when you write > the main formula, and only afterwards think to put in the "for all x". So > you might have, say "n[sub]i > 0 (all i in N)" > > So is there an elegant way to translate this kind of thing into lojban? Not in Standard Lojban. But one has been proposed for Academic Lojban: http://www.lojban.org/wiki/index.php/Experimental%20anaphorics Your example would be: koi'a xi i bu zmadu li no zo'au ro da poi [i in N] It's not a pure afterthought system, in the sense that it doesn't avoid all need to plan ahead, but even if a pure afterthought system were possible it would be so complicated that it would be harder to use than forethought (i.e. it would be easier to plan ahead than to not plan ahead & have to go into contortions to undo the effects of the failure to plan ahead). --And.