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In the dim dark past of Thursday last, And said: >> Is the consensus then that "fractional quantifiers" are true >> quantifiers? "piro" means "each bit of", and not "the largest >> possible bit of" (="the whole")? >I don't know if that's the consensus, but Lojbab persuaded me into >this view (!!!). And, Bob arguing something in logic should be prima facie reason enough to dispute it. :-) (Actually, :-| .) >There are two reasons. The first is that if >fractional quantifiers weren't true quantifiers then they would >have to be abolished; that is, given the grammatical environments >they occur in, they must be true quantifiers. .... *or*, they aren't real quantifiers, and they are doing something else, as a notational convenience. I mean, piro isn't a number; why expect it to be a true quantifier like a number? >The second reason >is that it's difficult to see the difference between "each bit >of" and "the whole" (and likewise for other fractions), unless, >say, the "an x-sized bit of" has extra properties such as integrity >of form, and if so then this is something that should be expressed >by a selbri. It's exceedingly easy to see the difference for sets/collectives of atoms, though. And people want to be able to say "the whole of" rather more often than they want to say "every possible bit of", and "half of" more often than "this half of", or "that half of". How would you suggest they say it?