Re: more sources of opacity-like phenomena

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> John Cowan ruled that {ba} behaved as a singular term, which

Oh, maaaaan.  Now I know how Lojbab feels. zo'o

> in practice means that it commutes with everything. But I'm not
> sure that this is the best rule for all tenses, especially the
> "roi"s.

> If they are attached directly to the selbri, then they have to
> have bridi scope, anything else would be very strange. The
> question is whether the two times of {reroi} are viewed as a
> mass of two times, or each time separately, which seems to make
> more sense. In the latter case, the tense doesn't commute with
> everything, and we need to know how it interacts with negation
> (ie which one has wider scope, since both have bridi scope).

The negation paper says that negation has wider scope.  However, I'm
not sure it's to be believed on this point.

The current grammar allows both "NA <tense> <selbri>" and
"<selbri> NA tense"; the negation paper says that there are no known
differences between these two forms, but that is remote from the
discussion of "-roi", which is very brief.  The selbri paper says there
is no difference, period; the negation paper allows that there might be,
but its nature is not known.  Perhaps the relative scope of negation and
tense should be, in fact, determined by order in this case (or indeed in
every case, but indistinguishably most of the time).

>  1)     mi reroi tcidu ci lo cukta
> 
> does allow I think that there be up to 6 books that I read in all.
> The reroi has wider scope than the ci lo cukta, and so it is like
> {le re prenu cu tcidu ci lo cukta}, for each of two people there are
> three books that each reads.

Yes.  "On two occasions (within an interval of default size and temporal
position) there are three books such that I read each of them." seems to me
a sound paraphrase.  I think there can be any number of distinct books from
three to six.

> To get the same three books the two times, you can separate the
> {reroi} from the selbri and put it after the {ci lo cukta}
> 
>  2)     mi tcidu ci lo cukta reroi
> 
> which goes to prenex form as:
> 
>  3)     da poi du ci lo cukta reroiku zo'u mi tcidu da
> 
> which is similar to what happens with {ci lo cukta cu se tcidu
> le re prenu}, there are three books such that each of the two people
> read them.

Correct.  However, the doubtful case is:

4)	ci lo cukta cu reroi se tcidu mi
	some-three of-those-that-are books two-times are read by-me

On the view that selbri-attached tenses have bridi scope, this means the
same as Example 1; on the view that they have scope only from where they
are, then this means the same as Example 2.  Making selbri tags have
bridi scope has a certain appeal, but then Example 4 is different from:

5)	ci lo cukta reroi ku se tcidu mi

where the "reroi" isn't part of the selbri but is free-floating (and happens
to be just in front of the selbri).  This result is unpleasing.  I think
I have to hold that selbri-attached tenses don't have bridi scope after all.
But if negation always has full scope, then NA+tense and tense+NA mean
the same (although NA+KU+tense and tense+NA+KU don't).  So much for my
previous conclusions.

> > I presume these matters have been solved long ago (though
> > I don't recall them being discussed on the list).
> 
> You may be presuming too much. Let's first hear from the real experts.

And who are they, pray tell?  Obviously not me, nor lojbab.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.