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Okay, here's a story the first half of which I *think* we can
agree on. The second half I think we ought to agree on, but
I expect we won't.
Quantifiers can be divided up into 'cardinals' and 'fractionals'.
Fractionals mean "x per y": "x-per-y broda cu brode" means that
out of every y broda, x of them are brode. Y is always 1 or more.
When an "x-per-y broda" claim is made about a world in which
there are fewer than y broda, the claim is meaningless in the
sense of uninformative, but is "deemed" to be technically true.
(See below for more on what "deemed" might mean.) So "x-per-y
broda cu brode" strictly means "Either there are at least y
broda and x of them per y broda are brode, or there are fewer
than y broda". In other words, fractionals are 'nonimporting'.
(Had they been importing, they would have meant "There are at
least y broda, and x of them per y broda are brode".) The
rationale for this is to make DeMorgan work more elegantly.
Cardinals (other than no) are importing. {su'o, pa, re} are
cardinals. {so'e, ro, me'i ro} are fractionals. {no} neutralizes
the cardinal/fractional distinction (and is by deduction
nonimporting).
I think this gives the scheme Jordan, Jorge et al want: A-E-I+O+.
A- = ro (nonimp because fractional)
E- = no
I+ = su'o (imp because cardinal)
O+ = su'o+na (but NOT me'iro)
(In what I have said here, I am contradicting what I said yesterday,
because I had been making the mistake of thinking of su'o as a
fractional (i.e. as "some of" rather than as "one or more of").
(Partly this is because I don't really think of cardinals as
quantifiers.))
Let me move on to a bit that we might not agree on:
I guess there is still scope for having a way to mark fractionals
for importingness, for people who want to say "There are at least
y broda, and x of them per y broda are brode" and not "Either there
are at least y broda and x of them per y broda are brode, or there
are fewer than y broda". We know that pc feels very strongly
about this.
Now consider that the basis for choosing the default importingess
is rather esoteric, verging on the arbitrary. And consider that no
cooperative speaker would want to talk of "x-per-y broda" when
talking of a world with fewer than y broda, so the importingness is
of theoretical rather than practical significance. Given both these
considerations, I make the following proposal.
Define two cmavo:
fi'au = non-importing PER (< fi'u)
fu'oi = importing PER (blend of fi'au + su'o)
these have a grammar similar to fi'u and pi (e.g. {fi'au so'e},
{fu'oi so'e}, {fi'au ro}, {fu'oi ro}.
When functioning as fractional quantifiers, bare ro & so'e are
technically ambiguous between fi'au and fu'oi. The ambiguity
should not matter to usage, because there is no good reason
to want to make a claim where it does matter.
--And.