Re: refgrammar

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

Some fussy comments on "Nobody.txt"

1.  "Exists" talk is liable to create confusions (there is a discussion
on one of the logic lists right now about how we can talk about
Guernica being painted by Picasso now tht Picasso no longer exists
-- being dead and all -- and that is just the simplest problem that
arises in these contexts), so I would drop the "there exists" talk in
2.3 ff  in favor of "there is" or "for some."  Similarly, around 3.5,
you talk of "everything that exists" and the like; just drop the "that
exists."   Same thing at 6.1, where there is in addition a bit about
non-existents that just muddles the whole situation further.  I don't
BTW recommend a discussion of universes of discourse or range
of variables or other more correct expressions in these contexts;
people seem to work pretty well with the right things for a long
time and then, when they do start to raise questions, is the time to
lay it out in detail.
But I have to admit that using "exist" does make the 8.7-8.9
contrast clear and nothing else seems to work as efficiently.  But
don't take it too literally.

2.  .  The "any" in 8.4ff has nothing to do with opacity (and is not
even a natural expression in my dialect nor in standard English --
without a contrastive stress).  Nor does "any" in English regularly
work in the way described, whether universal or particular:  "If
anyone comes, I'll be surprised" is a more natural pattern and
unrelated to opacity.  For the same sort of reasons, the "anything"
at 9.9 is problematic at least.

3.  The explanation of opacity by putting it within an abstraction
sumti is okay as far as it goes but does not cover all the cases, as
the various threads on the issue over the last couple of years have
shown.   Nor do the examples suggest how to handle natural
language cases -- nor how to spot them for that matter.  I think this
is an important enough matter to deserve some space (but I think it
belongs either in the sumti section or the selbri places sructure
section, since quantifiers have nothing special to do with it).

4.  While you are running through the moves with negations and
quantifiers, two comments:
        a.  The rules with restricted quantifiers are (to xorxes'
dismay) different from those for the unrestricted ones, at least
when the plenty of the restriction is in doubt (and we have not yet
found again the word for the denial of "every").
        b.  There are a lot of quantifiers other than _ro_ and _su'o_
and they get "inverted" too, so some comments about those may be
in order.

5.  After 10.11 the discussion has _ga_ and _ge_ (or "both" and
"either") reversed.

6.  In 6 and 7,  _Q broda_ is equated with _Q da poi broda_ (or so).
But,
        a) _Q lo broda_  is not discussed in this connection, either
as being the same or as representing  _Q da g(something) broda_ .
        b) Nor is the scoping use of the Q broda/Q lo broda
distinction, that & seems to think important, mentioned.
        c) come to think of it, there is precious little about the use
of unrestricted quantifiers to say normal things in this whole
chapter.  That may be a good thing, of course, give the tendency of
some to make these puppies take over where they do not belong,
but they do have a legitimate use, especially since you have talked
some about "any"

7.  The scope note in 14 is not the traditional view in Loglan,
where -- based on Peirce -- quantifiers could run on indefinitely,
until officially reset by a new-topic marker or (and this may be the
reason for the change) requantifying.    The new requantifying rule
may make for problems anyhow, though it is useful and simpler
than what would have been required before, an intervening LUhA,
I think it was.  But it does make clear long scope cases hard to do
and they, the surrogates for pronouns in a lot of cases, are probably
more important than the selection sense.  At least some more
discussion seems called for here (including a good way to do long
scopes under the given view).

8.  At 8.9, the translation needs the whole of the poi clause spelled out
in it.

pc>|83