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On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:01 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
>
> Some miscellaneous comments:
>
> 1. I'd like to see unary existential and universal quantifiers, and also a
> unary counterpart of l- (but see (4)). Particularly with existentials, one
> doesn't always have any restriction.
You can use the non-restriction restriction "sm": "sa sma blna", "some
x is blue", "something is blue".
I'm not sure it's worth assigning three additional consonants for this.
> 2. I'd like to see a ternary quantifier with a fraction argument (where
> the fraction is "all", "some", "two in every three", "a lot" and so forth).
Can't "je" handle this? Let's say "lt" means "a lot", then "la je lta
mlta xkra", "a lot of cats are black".
> 3. I would allow variables to be implicitly bound, so that "brda" with
> unbound "a" is short for "za brda", where "z" is unary existential
> quantifier. This would mean that in "(sa xrma (lu bjrafu vska'aku)) (xkra)",
> "xkra" is short for "za xkra".
We already allow implicit binding. The proposed rule was that the free
variable is implicitly bound by "l" with the same restriction that
that same variable was bound last time it was used. Your example is
thus equivalent to "(sa xrma (lu bjrafu vska'aku)) ([la xrma] (xkra))"
> 4. Is there a reason why we can't do without {l} -- why an existential
> quantifier won't suffice? (I expect the answer is Yes, but tell me the
> reason.)
"l" is prior to the "r"/"s" distinction. With "l" the referent(s) that
satisfy the restriction are not distinguished, individuated, counted.
They are myopically singularized (which doesn't mean they can't be
many). This means that "l" can be moved past negation and proper
quantifiers, which is very convenient.
mu'o mi'e xorxes