WikiDiscuss

---

wrote:

>
> pc:
> > --- Jorge Llambías wrote:
> > > I take every unquantified sumti as a
> > > plural constant,
> > > i.e. a constant with one or more referents.
> >
> > Well, we've been over this before. If you
> are
> > going to make reference sometimes a relation
> > rather than a function, it becomes one all of
> the
> > time. That is, variables become plural, too.
>
>
> Let {da'oi}, {de'oi}, {di'oi} be plural
> variables.
> Let {su'oi} be the existential plural
> quantifier.
>
> (Note: I am not proposing to actually make
> these part of
> the language, I am just using them as stepping
> stones in
> the definitions.)
>
> Now define {su'o da zo'u da broda} as:
>
> su'oi da'oi poi naku su'oi de'oi naku zo'u
> ganai de'oi me da'oi gi da'oi me de'oi zo'u
> da'oi broda

Well, OK, though I think that using restricted
quantifiers along with plurals makes the whole
tidier (and, of course, I want my universals to
be importing — but that is easy to work either
way, especially if we start with importing ones.
In fact your device is just the right one to use
in that case.)

> So we have da defined as a singular variable
> with the
> singular quantifier {su'o}. The rest of the
> numeric
> quantifiers can be defined in terms of {su'o}.
>
> > I
> > suppose that it does happen that as a matter
> of
> > fact variables are always assigned on a
> single
> > referent but that can't be built into the
> system
>
> Why can't it be built into the system?

Well, it could be — but the system in which it
works is the plural one. We can't strat with the
singular and then allow that some variables havve
more than one referent. And, of course, once we
have the plurals, the point of keeping separate
singulars is mostly lost. If they are enforced
singulars, then again we have it that ordinary
variable cannot generalize plural objects, so
almost everything is just done twice: "There is x
or there are i such that x F or iD-F" and so on.

> > (and, indeed, would result in no variable be
> > usable to generalize on one of the plural
> terms).
>
> Right, da, de, di as defined above can only
> generalize
> on the special cases where the plural constant
> happens
> to have a single referent.
>
> > The "constant" continues to worry me — what
> do
> > you mean by that expression. It cannot be
> > negation transparency of course, because that
> > doesn't work in one direction or the other.
>
> Yes, I do mean negation transparency. I take
> these
> to be materially equivalent:
>
> naku lo rozgu cu xunre
> lo rozgu naku cu xunre
>
> "It is not the case that roses are red."
> "As for roses, it is not the case that they are
> red."

I know you do and I am still waiting for an
explanation of how this is going to work. The
first means that is false that some (particular,
I would think) roses are red — all of them.
That could be because there are no roses or
because there are no roses picked out by the
expression or because there are but not all of
them are are red — but some of them might be.
The second says that there are roses picked out
by the expression and all of them are non-red.
Note that only one subcase covered by the first
is covered by the second, hardly an equivalence.

> > Well, I did offer a version of my own a while
> > back (with fractionals as far as I can
> remember)
> > and with collective {loi lei lai}. You
> objected
> > that some of the things that I had for
> > descriptors you had for quantifier
> expressions
> > (and I think I had my quantifier expressions
> > wrong from my point of view, too) but
> otherwise
> > did not comment on the project as a whole. I
> > think it was internally consistent, however,
> once
> > the quantifiers are corrected to read, for
> > example, {(su'o) da broda} = Ex:FxAy:Fyy
> > among x (I assumed plural quantifiers, to be
> sure
> > — I could redo it in terms of groups, which
> > would be formally identical, though a bit
> > wordier).
>
> It would be easier if you put everything in a
> wiki page,
> which you can update with any corrections and
> improvements as you make them.

I would not put up a wiki page — which has a
habit of being permanent — until I was
reasonably confident of what I had. And, of
course, I would not put up my page without
criticizing your — which means that der
Gruppenfuehrer will erase my page immediately he
notices it (he has threatened this several times
and has usually followed through on his threats).
So there is not much of a point to that exercise.

> > It also seemed to agree with CLL pretty
> > much — except for universally accepted
> changes,
> > like allowing unlabelled {lo} to be something
> > other than all the brodas or whatever.
>
> I really can't tell from what you say here. If
> you have
> alternative definitions, it would be nice to
> have them
> all together, preferrably in a page where they
> are easier
> to find later for consultation and where you
> can fix
> inevitable typos and mistakes. The crucial step
> however
> will be that somone else take a look at it, not
> just
> myself.

Well, it is back in the archives of the gadri
thread somewhere. I can try to fish it out, but
-- on the basis of the response the last time --
I doubt that anyone but you will look at it.