Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: "not only"

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 13:22:04 EDT

In a message dated 4/20/2001 2:55:46 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> > Are you sayiing that "Only females are pregnant" is false? That there is 
> > (among humans) something not female yet pregnant? How is this tricky?
> 
> No! My main point was/is that your (English) statement "are pregnant" is 
> not correct and thus misleading. (I assume it's colloquial 
> for {ka'e pazvau}. In German maybe: "Alle Frauen *werden* schwanger" {lo 
> fetsi cu pazvau binxo} instead of {... ka'e pazvau binxo}. 
> But I'll have to re-read your earlier statements - maybe got them in the 
> wrong throat. But have to leave for now...
> 

Lord, why me in retirement?! I did NOT say "All females are pregnant" and I 
did NOT say "Only females can be pregnant," I DID say "Only females are 
pregnant" where "are pregnant" is not colloquial (why would it be?) for {ka'e 
pazvau} but perfectly straightforward for {ca'a pazvau}. It is not false and 
should not be misleading (why take "is" for "can be"? the reverse does occur 
in most IE languages with verbs of primary sensation, one of those things 
Aristotle noticed but for which his explanation was totally unconvincing). 
I fear this gets back to week 1 of Logic 1: "only S is P" = "All P is S" (NOT 
-- and this is why the pregnant women example has been used since the 12th 
century at least -- All S is P).
I'm not sure how cleaning up those problems will affect your other remarks, 
which wandered too far off the case for me to reconstruct the point. Try 
again when we are on the same starting page at least.