WikiDiscuss

WikiDiscuss


BPFK Section: gadri

pc adds caps to indicate where replies fit.
A: Interesting. I wasn't aware of saying much of anything about quantified expressions — escept that one can be inferred from any unblocked sumti

B: There is very little the matter with {mi nitcu leva tanxe} aside from its taking the basket as an event. It does not create generalization problems because it has guaranteed — by explicit deixis — that the object referred to exists in this world. This clearly a very special case and is handled as such. I suspect that at a deep grammatical level it is handled — unlike most cases — by insertion from an external sumti.

C: My point is exactly that if we want to prevent the problems when we elect to do generalization we have to forbid generalization if we are not going to mark places where it does not apply, {nitcu2} for example.

D: Rabbit A is eating grass, Rabbit B is not, so Mr. Rabbit both is and is not eating grass. This is a flat contradiction and therefore, since contradictory objects cannot exist, Mr. Rabbit — as proposed — does not exist. And so, assuming that we have not decided to use the outer domain, Mr. Rabbit is not the referent of any {lo ractu} expression — except perhaps one in an intentional context.

E: already done God knows how often over the last few decades. Most of them are indistinguishable from cases of new {lo}, which is meant to appear conservative. The opaque cases — as with {nitcu} — are the most obvious differences. Other would probably be negative examples, where {lo} is used in place of some other more accurate gadri: {loi}, for example, or the possibly needed genus or goo forms.
pc

A:
(Many of pc's points refer to quantified terms. I agree with most of
what he says, but they don't concern the proposed lo, which is not a
quantified term.) I respond to some of the other points.

pc:
> As a solution to the opaque context
> "problem" in Lojban, the new {lo} is both inadequate and ineffective. It is
> inadequate because it does not "solve" the "problem" for any type of sumti
> other than one introduced by {lo}, but the same problem occurs with every
> other type of compound sumti (LO + (bridi)) or names.
B:
Could you explain what the problem is with:

mi nitcu le va tanxe
I need that box.

I don't see what could be the difference between:
"I need: (For that box: I have it)" and
"For that box: (I need: I have it)". Is there a
difference?

...
> Alternatively (or additionally,
> for that matter) we could deny that generalization was an inference that
> Lojban supported and take it that the logic it copied was a free logic
> (parallelling but slightly different from the view that "every" does not have
> existential
> import).

C:Presumably any logic can be expressed in Lojban as well as in English
or any other language. It seems that generalization is something that
we can do or not do irrespective of the language in which we express
it.

...
> As for "generic" individuals, I have trouble seeing them as other than
> either the genus itself or a concrete individual without specifying which
> one, a
> particular quantifier — with short scope, perhaps. The notion of Mr.
> Whatsis — at least the one that turns up most often — as a single object
> doing whatever any whatsis does really is contradictory and turns out to be
> nothing more than minimum-scoped quantifiers loosely disguised.

D:Could you please point out the contradiction, ideally with an example?

...
> Frankly, I think the best solution to all the problems that the new {lo} is
> meant to solve is just learning to deal with Lojban itself, not Lojanized
> English or Spanish or whatever.

E:If you could write the proposed lo-examples in what you consider
more correct Lojban, that would help to highlight where the differences
are.

mu'o mi'e xorxes





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