Re: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality)

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

>  >         <quantifier1> LE <quantifier2> <selbri>
>
> A quantifier can go in front of most any sumti, not just one with a LE
> or LA selma'o

Yes, that's the <quantifier1> above.  The <quantifier2> is a different
beast, and can only go between LE (or LA, I suppose) and the selbri.

> (anybody mind if I start calling these articles?),

That's what they are. You can also call them gadri.

> right?  That's why I phrased it as above.  (From the grammar, it
> appears that you can't have a quantifier before a sumti joined with
> connectives, but anywhere else will do.[1])

As long as you keep in mind that <quantifier2> is not really a proper
quantifier.

> [1] Which leads me to ask: how would I say: "two of the man, the woman
> and the child" (as a sumti)?  "The man, the woman, and the child" is
>       le nanmu joi le ninmu joi le verba

Unfortunately the {ku}s are unavoidable here. It has to be:

        le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba

> How do I select two of them?

        re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba


> To me, {pa le re le ci ninmu} looks like a total bastard.  If {re le ci
> ninmu} is a sumti, what are you doing putting {le} in front of it?

Well, there is a way of making some sense of it, if you make the
distinction between quantifiers and enumerators.

> I thought {le} was the form for converting a selbri to a sumti--what's
> it doing twice here?

It does have some uses.  This construction permits things like {le re
da}, for "the two things", very different from {re da}, "two things".

> {le ci ninmu} is almost as bad.

This one is extremely useful.  It is the simplest way to say how many
things you are refering to.

> When I first saw it, I thought {ci
> ninmu} was a unit--but no, this is really indecomposable.  Consider:
> to say "there are three men in the room" I can say
>
> .i lo ci nanmu ne'i le kumfa

I suppose you mean:

(1)     i lo ci nanmu cu nenri le kumfa

But that means:  At least one of the three things that are men is inside
the room.

You are claiming that there are only three referents that are nanmu.

To say that there are three men in the room, you'd have to say:

(2)     i ci lo nanmu cu nenri le kumfa
        Three of all those that are men are in this room.

Or, in short form:

(3)     i ci nanmu cu nenri le kumfa

The {ci} of (3) is the same {ci} of (2), where {lo} has been elided
by convention. It is not the {ci} of (1), which has a different meaning.

> as a sumti by itself; but to make a bridi, I need to rewrite this, in
> one of the following ways:
>       le ni loi nanmu ne'i le kumfa du li ci

That's a sumti:  The amount of some men being equal to three inside the
room.

> or
>       loi nanmu ne'i le kumfa cu cimei

That makes more sense: Some men are a threesome inside the room.

(But other men may be doing something else there.)

> or maybe
>       da noi te cimei nanmu ne'i le kumfa

That's not a bridi. It's one sumti: Something which is a set-of-three
type of man inside the room.

> or
>       ci da nanmu ne'i le kumfa

That's the best one: Three things are men in the room.

> Umm.  I'm not sure which of these mean what I want.  In any case, my
> point is that there's this syntax for implicitly making a claim about
> the number of ways to fill in variables to make a sumti true, without
> any corresponding syntax for filling in the places of a bridi.  Why
> can't
>       ci nanmu ne'i le kumfa
> mean "There are men in the room (three of them)" or some such?

I remember asking this very same question to John Cowan once, since the
sumti {ci nanmu} can already be said {ci lo nanmu}, why not let {ci
nanmu} be a selbri meaning "x1 is three men"?  The answer is that for
historical reasons it is what it is.

> (Or maybe that should be
>       cimei nanmu ne'i le kumfa
> and we should just use this tanru instead of the inside quantifiers.
> Yes, I'm starting to like this.)

That one is fine too.

>
> I've been studying the syntax of sumti.  It is, to put it mildly, a
> mess.

Well, it has its things, but I wouldn't say it's a mess...  You're being
more of an iconoclast than I ever was!  :)

> Did you know {le mi do se cusku} is ungrammatical?

Yes. Whatever would you want it to mean?

>  > BTW, strangely enough, {le pe fi le xunre ku plini} is grammatical, but
>  > with {be} instead of {pe} it isn't.
>
> What on earth is {le pe fi le xunre ku plini} supposed to mean?

Pretty much what you meant by *{le fi le xunre ku plini}.  In general,
{LE <sumti> <selbri>} means the same as {le <selbri> pe <sumti>}, which
in turn can also be written as {LE pe <sumti> <selbri>}

> mu'o mi'e. dilyn.

co'o mi'e xorxes