Wiki page BPFK Section: Grammatical Pro-sumti changed
<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 01:12:17PM -0700, John
> E Clifford wrote:
> >
> > {zo'e} otiose "it"
>
> What?
>
> > used to refer to something it is not
> necessary to mention in
> > context. The unnecessity may be due to 1)the
> fact that what it is
> > does not matter and will not turn up in the
> conversation or 2) it
> > is obvious from the context what is intended.
> Except in place
> > counting and some conventi0ons about
> abstracts, using {zo'e} is
> > exactly the same as leaving the place blank.
> {zo'e} is preferred
> > to {su'o da} because it is shorter and {su'o
> da} suggest that
> > there will be further references to this
> thing, if it does not
> > matter, but is improper if the referent is
> obvious (and so known).
>
> zo'e is *NOT* su'o da as long as da is a
> singular variable.
> Furthermore, da cannot be an abstraction.
>
> Other than that, is there something in the
> above that you feel I
> left out of my definition?
I was shooting for brevity and missed.
The reasons why {zo'e} is not {su'o da}are, as
noted, pragmatic, not semantic (semantically they
mean the same).
Why can't {da} be an sbstraction? It seems it
could take any first order term and all Lojban
terms are first order. And what does singular
have to do with it (or anything, come to that)?
What would be different about a plural variable
that would make it OK in an unused place but that
is not available to singular variables?