Interpreting sumti (was: anaphor means what?)

[cbmvax!uunet!math.ucla.edu!jimc]

> Date:  Mon, 29 Apr 91 12:14:03 EDT
> To:  lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
> From:  cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan)
> Subject:  Re: anaphor means what? (was: oops! correction)
   
> kartr. jim. writes:
> > And similarly for other articles in extension (le, le'e).  In Lojban an
> > easy way to insure this is to define a sumti with <LE> to be 
> > an abbreviation for a restricted variable (da poi <bridi>), which 
> > unquestionably has the same referent everywhere it occurs in the sentence,
> > for each member of the sentence's Cartesian expansion.
> 
> This "unquestionably" won't work for "le", which has nothing to do with
> "da poi".  "le cribe" means "the thing I describe as a bear"; there is
> no requirement that it really >be< a bear.  "lo cribe" is indeed closer
> to "da poi cribe", except for the problem of the empty set I discussed
> earlier.

Oops, I was not clear.  I meant to say "<LE> ccvcv" is allegedly an
abbreviation for "da poi (something)", where the nature of the restriction
varies depending on the <LE> article.  Yes, "lo" is simplest in that the
brivla goes directly from the sumti into the restrictive clause.  

What I really want to hear about is the "problem of the empty set".  When
is a sumti veridical -- which I take to mean has a hidden implicit 
existential quantifier in it?  And when is a void referent set simply
ignored, producing a vacuously true assertion?  Take for an example:

	The dodo lives on Ascension Island

to be translated with "lo".  The X1 sumti (all things that really are 
[alive] dodos) has a void referent set.  What problems arise here?

		-- jimc