la rik cusku di'e
>> There are no bears outside the universe
>>of discourse. If you mention them then they are within the universe.
>
>Zo'o I think I know which side of that debate _you_ were on.
>
>Perhaps I misunderstood something And said. Within the entire
>physical/temporal universe, there is more than 4/7's of an individual
>bear - or so I believe. So does the statement of <lo vofi'uze cribe pu
>finti le lisri> refer to that entire universe or only to the 4/7 of a
>bear that I wish to talk to you about (a.k.a. "the universe of
>discourse")? The refgram says the former in the chapter on sumti.
Right. If you believe that there is more than 4/7 of a bear then
it would not make sense for you to talk about {lo vopi'uze cribe}
in general, even if there is some such fraction of bear that you
now want to discuss.
I don't think that "universe of discourse" can be limited to those
things that you wish to talk to me about. It is more like all those
things that it would make sense to talk about, or something like
that.
>(I'm not necessarily trying to revive that discussion. Just seeking
>info.)
For most of these issues there is no info you can get from
the list, other than what you can distil from the discussions. :)
>I pretty much understand inner vs. outer quantifiers (I think). I was
>wondering what if I wanted to say "John has six half-dollars," referring
>to half-dollar coins.
>
>Do we need to step down to multiple short sentences?
>
> ta goi ko'a sicni le merko pimu lo rupnu
> i la djan. ponse xa ko'a
You don't need to go to two sentences:
la djan ponse xa sicni be le merko bei pimu rupnu
>or move away from <lo>?
>
> la djan ponse xa le pimu merko rupnu sicni
No, this one doesn't work. It means "John has six of the half
dollar coin that I have in mind". It doesn't make sense. The
outer quantifier has to be less or equal than the inner.
For "six half-dollars" you need the description "x1 is a half-dollar"
rather than "x1 is a dollar". There are many ways to get that,
for example: {xa merko rupnu xadba sicni} = "6 coins of half of
a US dollar".
>(An aside that occurred to me while writing this: do outer quantifiers
>get absorbed into KOhA assignments?)
This was discussed before, but I don't remember what was
the outcome. The quantifiers certainly do get absorbed, but I'm
not sure whether it gets massified. For example:
i le ci cribe goi ko'a cu sipna
Each of the three bears (from now on koha) is asleep.
i ko'a vreta le ko'a ckana
(a) Each of them lies on each of the 3 beds.
(b) They lie on their beds.
My preference is (b), i.e. that {goi} massifies the referents, but I
don't remember what's the canon on this.
co'o mi'e xorxes