Re: TECH: more thoughts on zi'o

[jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU]

Lojbab writes:
> For these people, the route has a common general description, and
> we could just put "le panka" in the route place.  But we are stretching thing
> to do this, since none of the people has the same exact route, and indeed the
> people may not have the same route each time they individually walk through
> the park.

I know interpretations change in the wind, but I am remembering the Old
Loglan interpretation of omitted places (or my interpretation of Old
Loglan) which went like this:  Their nonexistent equivalent of zi'o was
an existentially quantified free variable like da-de-di.  So to
interpret

        le ci cribe cu klama fo le panka (fe zi'o fi zi'o fu zi'o)

you expand it, supplying a prenex that isn't in the original, to

        For each of the three bears, for the park (quantity of parks
        unstated in original but iteration (if any) and "le"
        interpretation is individual per bear), there exists X, Y and Z
        (individually per bear and per park) such that the bear goes to
        X from Y via (a route within) the park by transport device Z.

Quantification occurs left to right in order of first appearance of the
variables, whether in an explicit prenex or not.  Vacant places are
quantified at the end (individual for each set of explicit place
values), because if you had wanted to say that the same value applied
to all meaning set members you would have inserted an explicit da-de-di
in the proper order.  I think, instead, that you have implicitly put
all the vacant places at the beginning, so that only one value applies
to all meaning set members, and I think this order is neither necessary
nor helpful:

        There exists X, Y and Z such that for each of the three bears and
        for the park...

It would be another story if X1 were a mass noun, such as lei cribe,
the pack of bears.  Then the first item in the prenex would have a
count of only one, and so there would be only one X, Y and Z per (only
one) pack, not one per bear.

The distinction between unidirectional and multidirectional verbs of
motion: is this like xodit& (walk around) vs. podxodit& (walk up to
X2)? (Or whatever preposition.)  My teacher explaned this as a
imperfective/perfective distinction.  I could understand why podxodit&
is perfective, but I couldn't really see why xodit& had to be
specifically imperfective; I felt you could walk around perfectively.

                -- jimc