xorxes on requantification

From Lojban
Revision as of 17:20, 4 November 2013 by Gleki (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

[[jbocre: moved from [jbocre: XXS: Extended XS proposal]]

What still needs to be worked out in detail is what happens with re-quantification, for example when we use a quantifier with anaphora whose antecedent is an already quantified term, or when anaphora are used outside the scope of its antecedent's quantifier. I think that in those cases the quantification is over the same set as the previous quantifier's. For example:

no le ci prenu cu klama le zarci i re ra stali le zdani i pa ra klama le panka

None of the three people went to the market. Two of them stayed home. One of them went to the park.

{ra} is both times {le ci prenu}, because it is outside of the scope of its antecedent's quantifier.

--xorxes

  • Thanx. The {le} cases are relatively easy, because {le ci prenu} is a constant through the whole, the same choice at each occurrence, anaphorized or not. Doing the same with {ci prenu} is trickier and, of course, {lo ci prenu} is impossible. I find the old "a/the" shift to be a possibility here: later references to {ci prenu} first shift to {le ci prenu}, the ones picked up -- whoever they are -- by the previous instance. Of course, with anaphora we could just use {re py} for example, but full forms require an intervening something.

In the case of quantified {le}, when the pronoun is within the scope of the quantifier, shouldn't it behave like da rather than copying the le? Example:

ro le ci nixli cu cinba le ri mamta

Each of the three girls kissed her own mother.

In this case, {ri} is within the scope of {ro}. Shouldn't it act as {da} would in {ro da poi ke'a cmima le ci nixli}?

To say that each of the girls kissed their (common) mother we'd need {le mamta be le ro ri}, the mother of the all of them.

With ci prenu:

ci prenu cu klama le zarci i muboi py stali le zdani i biboi py klama le panka

Three people went to the market, five stayed home, eight went to the park.

[[jbocre: {mu py}, believe it or not, is a single number, so the boi is needed to separate quantifier from pronoun.]]

Here {py} is always lo prenu, Mr Person, and quantification is over its avatars. I agree that in order to say something else about the three that went to the market we'd have to switch to {le}, because now they would be specific. Unless we were still under the scope of {ci}, in which case the pronoun again would function as da:

ci prenu cu klama le zarci fu le py karce

Three people went to the market (each) in their own car

In this case py behaves as da would in {ci da poi prenu ... da}, because it is under the scope of {ci}.