Subject: RE: partial-bridi anaphora (was: RE: [lojban] no'a

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:00:14

la and cusku di'e

>So a bare ko'a refers to each member of the set separately, while
>a quantified ko'a requantifies over the set.
>
>Hmm. I can see the parallel with {da}, and I can see how this allows
>us to say the things we need to say, but I'm uncomfortable with
>the way the referent of ko'a shifts between members to set, depending
>on whether it's requantified.

ko'a never refers to the set. (Neither does da refer to the set to
which it is restricted.) It would work like this:

le ci ninmu ku goi ko'a cu viska ko'a
Each of the three women sees herself.

le ci ninmu ku goi ko'a cu viska ro ko'a
Each of the three women sees each of the three women.

>And the parallel with {da} seems rather feeble. With {da}, the poi
>clause restricts the range of da from everything to to just those
>things that have the property expressed by the clause. Further
>restrictions can be added, but restrictions are cancelled only by
>ra'o. (All this is as per my understanding of your proposals.)

I hadn't considered further restrictions, but it makes sense that
they be accumulative.

>With {ko'a}, you're assigning the name "ko'a" to something; either
>separately to each member of a specific set, or collectively to
>the specific set. I can't see the underlying logic of how you
>want things to be.

No, if you assign it collectively to the set, it becomes a mass
and the individuals are no longer accessible (except with lu'a).

> > > > An isomorphism is a one-to-one homomorphism.
> > >
> > >And what's a homomorphism, then?
> >
> > A mapping F such that F(x*y) = F(x)*F(y). Mind you, it's been
> > years since I've seen any of this, so I might be forgetting
> > something.
>
>I imagine that the terms must mean something else in linguistics,
>then, since they have something to do with form matching meaning.

It does have to do. You have a mapping, say from form to meaning.
x, "the cat", maps to a certain meaning F(x), and y, "the dog", maps
to a certain meaning F(y). Now you combine the two forms (the
operation * above), and you get x*y = "the cat and the dog" this
maps to another meaning F(x*y) which is a combination of the
meanings F(x) and F(y). So the meaning of "the cat and the dog"
is mapped to a certain combination of the meanings of "the cat"
and of "the dog", it does not map to some meaning that has nothing
to do with the meaning of "the cat" and the meaning of "the dog".
Or something like that anyway.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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