The dreaded word "only"

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

The difficulties of the English word "only" have been plaguing logical
language mavins since the Loglan Project began.  There is no word that
directly translates "only", and a variety of kludges have been used
to handle it.  Now comes Quine, whose book >Quiddities< explains a clear
and general method for restating "only" in the language of predicate logic
(which is of course what Lojban is about):

> Identity...
>
> A vital use of identity lurks unobserved in much of our use
> of 'only' and 'else' and 'nothing but'.  When I say that the hiding
> place is known to Ralph and only him, nobody else, I mean to
> say two things: that Ralph knows the hiding place and that
> whoever knows the hiding place is identical with Ralph.  To
> say that there is no God but Allah is to affirm, of whatever
> Gods there be, that Each, or He, is identical with Allah.

These two examples go directly into Lojban thus:

        ro da poi djuno fi le velmipri stuzi du la ralf.
        all x1s which know-about the secret-method place are-identical-to Ralph

        ro da poi cevni du la .alax.
        all x1s which are-gods are-identical-to Allah

Here are more examples showing the flexibility of this "da poi... du" construct:

        la djordj. du ro da poi darxi le tamni fo le nazbi
        George is-identical-to all those who hit the cousin on the nose.
        Only George hit his cousin on his nose.

(Note that English is over-specific by Lojban standards in saying "his cousin".
and "his nose".  Likewise, English idiomatically says "He put his hands in his
pockets": to speakers of other languages, the question naturally arises
"Whose pockets would he put his hands in?", and even more peculiar, "Whose
hands would he put in his pockets?".)

        ro da poi la djordj. darxi ke'a fo le nazbi du le tamne
        All those whom George hit on the nose are-identical-with the cousin.
        George hit only his cousin on his nose.

        ro da poi la djordj. darxi le tamne fo ke'a du le nazbi
        All that which George hit his cousin on are-identical-with the nose
        George hit his cousin only on his nose.
        George hit his cousin on his nose only.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban