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xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
>
> >The one thing I feel relatively strongly about is that all
> >restricted quantification should behave alike, with respect
> >to importingness. Given that, we have two possibilities,
>
> Nobody had argued for that position in this round.
I had, in two noncontiguous phases of my rapidly mutating
views. I have since then decided that all fractional quantifiers
should behave alike with respect to importingness, but that
ro, su'o, no and me'i are not fractional quantifiers but
cardinals, so I end up agreeing with your position.
> If all
> quantifiers had to be importing or all non-importing, the
> most natural choice would be importing, because non-importing
> su'o is not very intuitive. But negation reverses import,
> so if we want to maintain {no = naku su'o}, {ro = naku me'i}
> (and I do want to) then te best choice is universals (ro and no)
> without import and particulars (su'o and me'i) with import
But to concur with that view it is necessary to have a model
of quantification whereby these importingnesses emerge naturally
rather than by stipulation. I now discern such a model.
> The forms with import are easy to get anyway: {ro lo su'o broda}
> and {no lo su'o broda}, which do require a non-empty set of
> broda. These forms are not however the negation of the su'o and
> me'i forms in all cases
As I said to Jordan, the issue was not whether one could
find ways of expressing importing ro; the issue was whether its
intrinsic meaning dictated that it was importing.
> But what you say for all quantifiers does apply to {ro} which
> seems to be the only contentious one, even though {no} and {me'i}
> can be equally argued for both ways
>
> >1. RQ is importing. Therefore DeMorgan fails to apply to
> >RQ when the quantified set is empty. But it is so meaningless
> >to quantify an empty set that we would never want to do it,
> >so it is of no practical consequence whether DeMorgan applies
> >to it
>
> We don't normally want to quantify an empty set that we know
> to be empty, that's true, but sometimes we may not know it
The way I was seeing it, though, the same would apply to other
fractionals: you might say "If this set is nonempty, then
1 in 3 members is broda", and suchlike, just as you might
say that "If this set is nonempty then 1 in 1 members is
broda". I still think this, I just no longer think that ro
means "1 in 1".
> >2. RQ is nonimporting. But it is so meaningless to apply RQ
> >to an empty set that RQ always implicates a nonempty set
> >DeMorgan applies to RQ, but again this is of no practical
> >consequence
>
> The claims with ro quantification over empty sets are always
> vacuously true in one system and vacuously false in the other
> system, these claims are always meaningless in that sense
> But you can say things like: Every year since 1995, I have
> passed every exam that I took that year, except in 1999, when
> I failed one exam. Do we want that to entail that I took at
> least one exam every year since 1995, or just that I did not
> fail any exam in any year but 1999. Griceanly we may conclude
> that I took at least some exam most of those years, otherwise
> we would not want to make such a general claim (for example, if
> I only took an exam in 1999 the claim would still be true but
> misleading.)
I agree, but equally you can say things like: Every year since
1995 I have passed half the exams that I took that year. There
is nothing special about "every" in this instance. What we
want in a case like this is nonimporting fractionals.
> >If the choice is between (1) and (2), as I think it should
> >be, then it is hard to see how anybody could give a shit
> >which one is chosen. If it comes down to this choice and a
> >vote on it, I will abstain; I'd be equally happy with tossing
> >a coin to decide it
>
> The choice this round is between (A-E-I+O+) and (A+E-I+O-),
> but in other rounds there were advocates for (A+E+I+O+) as well
> I definitely think that the first one is the way to go, but the
> third I find preferrable to the second. O- ("not all" without
> import) is really unpallatable to me
We haven't heard from John yet, but xod and I are okay with
A-E-I+O+.
--And.