Re: [engelang] xorban summary - engelang messages

Well, there's stuff and there's stuff, as they say. It is clear that there is a difference between "I put stuff on stuff" and "I put stuff on itself. The latter is, for one thing, much more difficult -- getting the bottom to coincide with the top and all. They may both be stuff, but they are different stuff. And to prevent this problem from recurring everywhere, you don't want l at all, but s to start with, else all these will be reduced to the same thing (which, while I know you sometimes seem to talk about I find hard to think you really believe, it being such a needless complication). We do get back to the fact that l is a quantifier, so what it ranges are only things in the universe and it is unlikely that any of them will fill all the gaps in all the predicates truthfully.

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 17, 2012, at 7:56 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:

Jorge Llambías, On 18/09/2012 01:31:
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Mike S.<maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Mike S.<maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Formally this would be
>>>
>>> "la'a mslfa'a lo'e smo'e lo'e smo'e pnja'ako'eko'e"
>>>
>>> I think we have to agree that the outer o'e-binding has no effect and the
>>> inner o'e-binding is applied twice. Since we all (except pc) agree that
>>> "l-" is somehow singularizing, i.e. binds its variable to one entity
>>> (however that works), it's really hard not to read this as "I put things on
>>> themself".

"I put stuff on stuff" is no different from "I put stuff on itself", when there is nothing but stuff.

>> Moreover, what would we want
>>
>> le sme pnja'akeke
>>
>> to mean?
>
> OK, I'm convinced, yes, it has to mean "I put things on themselves",
> whether sigularized or not.
>
> So, for the cases where we want distinct o'e in the same simple
> formula, I suggest tassigning the whole series: o'e, o'e'e, o'e'e'e,
> and so on for this purpose. It should be rare to have to use two of
> these in the same simple formula, and extremely rare to need more than
> two.

I think it would be not unusual to want to have two arguments implicit but cobound, but:

1. Multiple distinct o'e won't make sense if they expand to "lo'e smo'e". Instead they should expand to "so'e smo'e". However:

2. I don't think it's unreasonable to forbid multiple distinct implicitly bound o'e, and just have lo'e smo'e. To say "I put something on something else" or even "I put something on itself" without excluding there being anything but itself, one would have to use explicit "sa sma".

--And.