Re: `at least one ' vrs `one or more'

["John E. Clifford" <Pycyn@AOL.COM>]

bob:
>I know there is a tendency to handle {lo} so sentences come out as
>examples of textbook logic.

Sorry, but this is the LOGICAL language and that means (among other things)
 that the
sentences DO come out as examples of textbook logic.  Further, it means that
all
structural transformations are formal, that is they do not depend upond what
particular
words are involved, but only upon the grammatical classes.  Since _viska_ and
_nelci_
belong to the same class, basic predicates (the "basic" is not important
here), the logical
transformations around them are exactly the same. That is, _lo mlatu_ is
equivalent to
_da poi mlatu_ inside the scope of _na_, which can be fronted as _ro da poi
mlatu_, i.e.,
"for every cat x, it is not the case that I like x."  No exceptions to any of
the rules of
transformation involved here.  Alas, it is not so in English, where -- as I
noted in another
context -- structures can be ambiguous, i.e., contradictory transformations
may be applied
to the surface (which reflect underlying differences, of course).  As noted
on this thread,
stress and the like -- missing in print -- helps disambiguate but is not
perfect.  It happens
(alas) that scopes are one of the areas where this sort of thing happens most
often: as
witness the first homework in a moderately thorough logic class.  Here the
problem is
just whether the "one or more" or "at least one" is or is not in the scope of
the negation.
It may be that in bob's idiolect these two expressions are consistently
different on this
issue (as, for example, "any" is consistently in my idiolect --and most
Americans' at least
-- a universal that is outside the scope of an apparently governing negation:
"I don't like
any cats" = "for every cat x, it is not the case that I like x."  My idiolect
also allows "(a)
certain" to function similarly for particulars,  "I don't like certain cats"
= "there is at least
one cat x such that it is not the case I like x.")  They are not consistently
different in my
idiolect.  To me, then, bob's arguments seem merely to be bogged down in the
ambiguities of English (why we have Lojban, for one) and, if he is right
about one
meaning of the English version, it simply is not a good translation of the
Lojban.  Lojban
doesn't (I am pretty sure I lost this one) have any such context-leapers, so
a quantifier
(even an invisible one) is always inside the scope of the governing negation
(etc.)

to'e nelci -- or its compounded form (it that possible?) -- is better for
dislike than the na'e
or na forms, for the reasons stated somewhere down this thread.

>|83 pc