WikiDiscuss

pc:
> Since so many of
> the are explicitly about reference, I have to
> asume that xorxes is using "refer" in some
> nonstandard way. Two possibilities occur to me
> so far. 1) He is using plural semantics (already
> nonstandard) at least occasionally.

Yes. I take every unquantified sumti as a plural constant,
i.e. a constant with one or more referents.

> Ahah! I just got it: unquantified descriptions
> (or at least {lo}) are inherently collective, but
> external quantifiers (at least numerical ones)are
> inherently distributive.

Right.

> On the
> whole it still seems that leaving distributive as
> (linguistically — though not logically)
> fundamental and then marking collectives somehow
> is going to be most efficient — if we are going
> to introduce these notions at all (which, if we
> do, why not go to plural logic altogether, since
> then at least we are up front about what is going
> on, which is mightily unclear now).

>From my part, you are welcome to offer an alternative system.

The system I propose consists of lo/le/la and non-fractional
quantifiers. That's all we need.

Sets, masses, typicals and fractional quantifiers are bells
and whistles as far as I'm concerned, added for back compatibility
with CLL but really not a relevant part of the system. I think they
have been added in a fairly systematic way given those constrains.
I can certainly imagine more elegant functions for them, but they
wouldn't agree with CLL. If you suggest something else and there
is support for the idea, I'll be happy to go along with it.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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