Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:not only

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 23:00:20 EDT

In a message dated 4/18/2001 8:05:17 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> > > pa da nenri le tanxe i le bolci ji'a cu go'i
> > > "Exactly one thing is in the box, the ball too is in the box."
> >
> >{ji'a} is the wrong discursive to use at this
> >point; {sa'e} would be better or some other "namely rider." The "in 
> >addition"
> >is the remark, not the thing mentioned in the remark: " the ball too" is
> >sloppy translating for "moreover the ball."
> 
> The same thing applies to {po'o} then. It doesn't change truth values
> if {ji'a} doesn't.
> 
I think it is clear that I don't understand what {po'o} means, other than 
that it has nothing to do with English "only".
"The ball is the only thing in the box but the screw is in there too" is 
contradictory because the screw is not the ball and the first sentence says 
that everything in the box is identical with the ball. "There is only one 
thing in the box and moreover the screw is in there too" is odd but not 
contradictory: it tells me that the thing in the box is the screw, so it adds 
information, but information that would normally be put with a namely rider, 
like "that is, the screw is in there." It is contradictory if the second 
part means that the screw is in there in addition to the exactly one thing 
that is in there, but the {ji'a} does not say that, since it is a discursive: 
you need a non-agentive addition of the screw to the other thing (te sumji?). 
Merely flagging an additional *remark*, doesn't mark an additonal thing.

<>"only my wife likes olives and even she can't stand them"

That works, but it entails that someone can like something
that they can't stand. On the other hand, if you say "only my wife
likes olives and even she doesn't like them", there is a flat
contradiction for me, and the phrase loses all its humour.>
Actually, I think it is funnier, largely because it cuts across the persons 
*expectations*. There is a perfectly good implicature there, but not an 
entailment, so the denial is a shock but not a contradiction. Probably not 
even a shock around me, since I use it a lot.

<It's extremely hard for me to believe that "only my wife likes
olives" does not entail "my wife likes olives", but it doesn't
really matter if this is how English works. In Lojban, if you
say {le mi speni ku po'o nelci lo'e rasygrute} then you are
commited to {le mi speni cu nelci lo'e rasygrute}, no matter
whether the English "equivalent" requires it or not. Also,
{po'o} is appropriate only if there is no other relevant olive
liker. Just like in {le mi speni ku ji'a nelci lo'e rasygrute},
{ji'a} would be appropriate only if there is some other relevant
olive liker.>
Then {po'o} affects truth value and should not be a discursive -- and should 
probably be replaced by the appropriate form noted earlier, under general 
lojbanic principles.
Note the difference even you make between {po'o} requiring that my wife like 
olives (as you say) and {ji'a} being inappropriate when there are no other 
olive likers. That would be the difference between entailment and 
implicature in a nutshell -- if it held. But your {po'o}, if it were really 
related to "only," would not be merely inappropriate if there were another 
relevant olive liker, it would be false. The {ji'a} expression is only false 
if your wife doesn't like olives, but it may be starkly odd if no one has 
mentioned liking olives in the conversation up too the utterance.

<I don't think you have shown that {po'o} is in any way less
logical than {ji'a}.>
That wasn't my aim. I only want to show that if they both function like 
{ji'a} then {po'o} has nothing to do with ^only"^(concept, not English word) 
and that if {po'o} does function like ^only^ then it functions very 
differently from {ji'a} (these amount to the same thing, of course). I think 
the upshot is that {ji'a} is a perfectly good discursive and {po'o} is a 
bloody mess.

<>Since Lojban has consistently refused to give existential import to
>universally quantified terms (and it has repeatedly over nearly 50 years),

I am extremely glad to hear you say this. In our August '95
discussion you were holding the opposite view, that {ro} had
existential import!>
Gotta keep are arguments straight here (and I don't always manage). My notes 
show two things: that all versions of "All S is P" : ro S cu P, ro da poi S 
cu P, roda ganai da S gi da P, rolo S cu P, and probably some I've forgotten 
do none of them entail the corresponding existential: su'o S cu P, dapoi S cu 
P, da ge da S gi da P, su'o lo S cu P and thus all are the universals are 
true if there are no Ss (this is usually the crucial point). And I have 
argued for a quarter century (even winning for one short spell) that at least 
one of these forms (I like rodapoi) should have existential import, to match 
up with the implicature, which is there for all the cases, though least for 
roda ganai.  
The problem is that, in standard logic, the raw universal does have 
existential import, even though the restricted one does not. So, ro da ganai 
da S gi da P does imply 
su'o da ganai da S gi da P, whatever that means and all of the other forms 
have, hidden away in them somewhere an equally murky form. And so, when one 
uses a universal quantifier not in an A sentence, one does in fact commit to 
the partiuclar form as well. In particular in the internal quantifiers in 
descriptions (the case in point again) roloro S commits one to there being 
S's, by the internal quantifier, not the outer one. What I meant when I said 
a while ago that we had the wrong quantifiers on these guys. 

<><, but "only the cat likes that chair" does imply
>that the cat likes that chair. It is not just a case of
>"only Ss are Ps".>
>
>What is it a case of, then?  Surely the fact that the subject is singular
>does not alter the logic so completely -- especially if it can take the 
>same
>quantifier expression as the general case.

It is not being singular that makes it different, "only my
two cats like that chair" would work just the same. Unlike
"all", "the" does have existential import. At least in Lojban
this is very clear: {le broda} is {ro le su'o broda}.>

So, we agree that we need existential import to make the inference that the 
subject of ^only^ actually has the property and we agree that the universal 
taken alone does not have that import. Hence it does not entail that some S 
is P. Why the argument then? Ah yes, you don't believe the original point 
that "only S is P" is "All P is S" and the fact that you have cats helps not 
at all, since it is not proven that there are chair likers -- though it is 
implicated.