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Jorge Llamb�as, On 27/08/2012 01:40:
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.
Okay, then I'd like s and l to be unary. Or at least, that would be what I'd go for first in the absence of reasons not to. I suppose that binary "sa X-a Y-a" saves a je, because the unary version would be "sa je X-a y-a", but then the unary allows "sa blna" without the dummy predicate in "sa sma blna".
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".
I meant "proportionally a lot; a large proportion of".
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))"
I'd argue against this interpretation rule for two reasons. First, it means that to circumvent it you either have to use overt binding or have to search for a variable that has not previously been bound (within what span of text?). Second, the speaker-hearer should have to keep track only of syntactic binding, not keep a mental note ofall or some variable--restriction pairings in the prior text.
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.
OK, I get that if you're going to have restricted quantifiers then {l} makes sense as a default restrictive quantifier. And restricted quantifiers are certainly needed for stuff like "most", "2 in every 3" and so forth, as in (2) above; and restricted quantification for "all" is convenient even if not necessary. But instead of "la grka xkra". why not "za je grka xkra"? (where z is unary s).
--And.