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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Semantics of "l-" (and "s-" and "r-")

So far as I can see, long scope s (l) is exactly what the poor woodcutter needs.  I'd be curious to see cases where it fails.  
The "one in every three people" locutions are clearly not quantifiers at all (this one contradicts itself immediately if taken as such) but part of a whole side program of statistics in abroad sense, which is pro ably just grafted on to the language unchanged.  At least, we don't want to say that claims about the average man are true in the way that claims about the man next door.  We also don't want to build into our language a lot of stuff about how we find out whether such a claim is true, any more than we need the schematics of the hadron collider to yhaveva language to talk about physics.

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 11, 2012, at 6:07 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:

 

John E Clifford, On 11/09/2012 03:45:
> Well, a couple of examples: parallel predicates with intertwines
> strings of terms (Lojban can do this -- the rules are implicit, but
> never spelled out);

What's an example of this? I don't know what it is you're describing.

> quantifiers whos scopes go beyond sentence boundaries (Lojban can do
> this, too, but muddles the process enormously). Of course, you say
> that no quantifier has scope beyond the end of the sentence to which
> it is prenex, but then the question is how are you going to patch up
> the cases in ordinary language when this happens.

The poor woodcutter sort of quantifier, I'm still pondering. I don't think either Jorge's response or a mere widest-scope existential is adequate, but I'm still thinking about it.

The issues with the poor woodcutter case generalize to fractional quantifiers in general. E.g. "One in every three people has suffered from mental illness", and then that person, the one in every three, is projected into the UoD and can be referred to in later sentences. One existing possibility is to use dV, which is an afterthought method. A forethought method, which I have not hitherto proposed, but have been thinking about, might be to have a series of variables that carry on referring to that individual projected into the UoD.

> And, of course, we have yet to see any attempts to deal with
> abstractions or other intensional situations.

Abstractions in the Lojban sense? I think if fV is defined to be an intensional situation, everything else can be based on that. But you're right, we haven't discussed it properly yet.

Is there anything more you've thought of? I think the most constructive thing we can be doing is looking for gaps in what Xorban can do.

--And.

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