Re: "Only" (again) - comments needed so I don't make a fool of myself

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

Some comments on lojbab's reply to Horn.

> >   {Nobody but Homer/Only Homer} ate doughnuts.
>      le  pamei       po'u          la xomer citka   lo jintitnanba
>      The singularity which is      Homer    eat/ate doughnut(s).
>      Only            (restrictive)

I don't agree. This does not preclude from

        iji'a le remei po'u la bart joi la lisas citka lo jintitnanba

being also true. Saying that a singularity does something doesn't say that
it's the only one that does it. (Note that this is not in conflict with
goat's legs. If you had said {pa prenu no'u la xomer ...} maybe it would be
different.)

I would say:

        la xomer po'o citka lo jintitnanba

> where "pa", the Lojban quantificational "1" means "Exactly 1".

In the sense that la xomer is an exactly one, but not that there is
exactly one eater of doughnuts.


> >   {Everybody but Marge/!Shmonly Marge} ate doughnuts.
>
>      le  da'apamei        po'u     na'ebo     la mardj citka   lo jintitnanba
>      The all-but-one-some which is other-than Marge    eat/ate doughnut(s).

Again this doesn't say Marge didn't eat, although in this case, it might be
asumed from the context. Perhaps the obvious word for !shmonly would be
po'onai: the only exception.

        la mardj po'onai citka lo jintitnanba

although much more clear is

        la mardj po'o na citka lo jintitnanba

> >and ceteris paribus negative operators tend not to
> >lexicalize as readily as their positive counterparts:  we have MOST as a
> >determiner but not !LEAST (i.e.  'less than half of the...'), SOME (as
> >weak positive/monotone increasing determiner) vs.  !NALL (='not all'),
> >etc.
>
> Lojban has non-specific quantifiers
>
> so'u  a few
> so'o  several (your "LEAST")
> so'i  many
> so'o  a large number of (your "MOST")
> so'a  almost all (your "NALL")

I thought so'e was explicitly not to be taken as "more than half..."
and I never thought of so'o as "less than half..."
so'a may work for !NALL, but I don't think we've been treating
so'o as !LEAST

> And the existence of "da'a" thereby allows easy expression of "!SOME"
> "!MANY", "!MOST", etc. corresponding to the earlier sentences:

What are !SOME, !MOST, !MANY ??? Those already exist in English. Maybe
I misunderstood the meaning of ! but I thought it marked a word that
doesn't exist as a single word in English.

I think what he wants to say with !LEAST is something like:

        !LEAST people like strawberry ice-cream.

as easily as one says:

        Most people like chocolate ice-cream

I don't think using so'o achieves this in Lojban. Maybe da'aso'e, but it is
cheating, because {da'a} is a kind of negation, and {da'aso'e} is really
two words.

Finally, about the negation paper:

> I can send our general paper discussing negation, written a few years
> ago not too long after we went through your book, which in turn was
> Based on your examples here, I chose the obvious "only" equivalent from
> Lojban:

Before sending it, I would suggest checking again the De Morgan section.
It seems I wasn't able to convince John that there is something wrong
there. Not that it's the most important part of the paper, but Lojban
is supposed to be logical, and that section isn't.

The paper claims that:

12.1)   naku zo'u la djan. klama ga la paris. gi la rom.
        It is not the case that:  John goes-to either Paris or Rome.

and:

12.1b)  la djan. la paris. na klama  .ija la djan. la rom. na klama
        John, to-Paris, ~does-not-(go), and/or, John, to-Rome, ~does-not-(go).

mean the same thing. The English translations clearly do not mean the same
thing. I think the translations are right, and that De Morgan's theorem should
be applied in this expansion, i.e. those two Lojban sentences are not
 equivalent.

To verify that they're not equivalent, follow the advice given in the paper:

<<
It is wise, before freely doing transformations such as the one from Example
12.2 to Example 12.2a, that you become familiar with expanding logical
connectives to separate sentences, transforming the sentences, and then
recondensing.  Thus, you would prove the preceding transformation by the
following steps:
>>

from 12.1 we expand to:

        naku zo'u ga la djan klama la paris gi la djan klama la rom(as)

<<
At this expanded level, we apply DeMorgan's Law to distribute the
negation in the prenex across both sentences, to get
>>

        genai la djan klama la paris ginai la djan klama la rom(as)

or:

        ge la djan na klama la paris gi la djan na klama la rom(as)

or in afterthought:

        la djan na klama la paris ije la djan na klama la rom(as)

which is NOT the same as 12.1b

QED


Jorge