Re: quantifiers:masses

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Jorge says lots of sensible things to pc, and continues:
> > I am inclined to think that something about this is involved in the
> > difference between _loi broda_, a referring expression (so without
> > external quantifiers) for the mass of the whole of the set of brodas
> > (which I thought xorxes and I had gotten to a month ago or so but,
> > given our skill at cross talk, will not insist on)
> Since I still don't see why {piro loi broda} can't be a referring
> expression, I can't argue this point.

I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) "referring expression" is being
used with the definition "a constant, rather than a variable bound by
a quantifier". {piro loi} is therefore by defininition not a referring
expression, if {ro} here expresses a quantifier. In the American Civil
War, there was a battle in a place called the Wildnerness. It was a very
trying battle, because the Wildnerness was impenetrable tangle of trees
and bushes. The domain where the terminologies of logic, philosophy and
linguistics meet is in some respects rather similar, except that if you
had to choose to fight your way through one or the other, everyone would
choose the intellectual-terminological rather than the martial-geographical
terrain.

> I understand {pisu'o loi broda} as a mass whose components are broda
> (not necessarily all the broda there are), and {piro loi broda} as
> the mass whose components are all the broda there are.

And, equivalently, I hope, {pisuo loi broda} is something that is broda,
and {piro loi broda} is all the broda there is.

> Furthemore, I think {loi broda} is more useful as an abbreviation of
> {pisu'o loi broda} rather than of {piro loi broda}.

That seems so.

---
And