Re: more sources of opacity-like phenomena

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

> How do "tenses" interact with quantification?

You do like to ask difficult questions, don't you? I don't think
we have a fully worked out answer for this one.

John Cowan ruled that {ba} behaved as a singular term, which
in practice means that it commutes with everything. But I'm not
sure that this is the best rule for all tenses, especially the
"roi"s.

> I see an obvious solution if they have scope over the bridi
> they occur in: use xaha & xahanai.

If they are attached directly to the selbri, then they have to
have bridi scope, anything else would be very strange. The
question is whether the two times of {reroi} are viewed as a
mass of two times, or each time separately, which seems to make
more sense. In the latter case, the tense doesn't commute with
everything, and we need to know how it interacts with negation
(ie which one has wider scope, since both have bridi scope).

        mi reroi tcidu ci lo cukta

does allow I think that there be up to 6 books that I read in all.
The reroi has wider scope than the ci lo cukta, and so it is like
{le re prenu cu tcidu ci lo cukta}, for each of two people there are
three books that each reads.

To get the same three books the two times, you can separate the
{reroi} from the selbri and put it after the {ci lo cukta}

        mi tcidu ci lo cukta reroi

which goes to prenex form as:

        da poi du ci lo cukta reroiku zo'u mi tcidu da

which is similar to what happens with {ci lo cukta cu se tcidu
le re prenu}, there are three books such that each of the two people
read them.

> I presume these matters have been solved long ago (though
> I don't recall them being discussed on the list).

You may be presuming too much. Let's first hear from the real experts.


Jorge