Re: Q-kau

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

la veion cusku di'e

>   Personally I think that Lojban ought to have available such forms
>   of quantified sumti that the meaning of a bridi involving these
>   sumti survives SE conversion, i.e. the distributive properties of
>   quantifiers ought to be controllable so that a desired distribution
>   doesn't dictate the ordering of sumti.

There is a way to control it: use the prenex.

For example:

        le ci prenu re cukta zo'u py tcidu cy
        Each of the three people read two books.

        le ci prenu re cukta zo'u cy se tcidu py
        Same thing.

        re cukta le ci prenu zo'u py tcidu cy
        There are two books that are read by each of the three people.

        re cukta le ci prenu zo'u cy se tcidu py
        Same thing.

>   For both stylistic reasons
>   (free topicalization) and syntactic reasons (economy of constructs)
>   it would be nice to be in total control. I've done my share of
>   restructuring NL sentences to contorted forms in order to get the
>   quantificational aspects down just pat - I'd like to avoid that
>   kind of unnecessary inelegance in Lojban.

Ok, but you must realize that if you gain something you must lose something.

If {le ci prenu cu tcidu re cukta} and {re cukta cu se tcidu le ci prenu}
mean the same thing, then we've lost the capability of saying in a
simple manner that there are two books (same ones) read by each of the
three people.

I prefer to have the simplest rule: scope is given by order of appearance.

Other rules are possible, they have some advantages and some disadvantages.
I don't think that the net gain of any other rule is such that outweighs
the simplicity of the order of appearance rule.

In any case, it would be nice to have a fixed rule as soon as possible.

Jorge