TECH: Topic constructions and prenexes

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

Lojbab has often touted the fact that, with our prenexes, we can emulate
the Chinese and Japanese topic constructions. Having had to take a brief
look at Japanese recently, I'm not sure it does. The distinction between
topic and subject in Japanese, at least, is captured in Lojban by {bi'unai}/
{bi'u}, and in other languages by the corresponding mechanisms for
distinguishing new referents from ones already introduced in discourse.
The typical logical use for prenexes ("For all X" etc.) is to introduce
new referents, not old ones. I'm thus not at all sure that, just because
its syntax corresponds to the Japanese construct (or the English one: "As
for him..."), its semantics will as well. It sounds more like we're trying
to make the prenex syntactic construct do two jobs at once, and I'm not
convinced we'll get away with it...

 %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%   %%%
non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, %   (nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au)
quaero mei similes et adjungor pravis.      % Nick Nicholas, CogSci victim,
      --- Archipoeta, _Confessio_.          % Univ. of Melbourne, Australia