John Woldemar Cowan

“ Restricted claims: “da poi” The universal claims of Section 3 are not only false but absurd: there is really very little to be said that is both true and non-trivial about every object whatsoever. Furthermore, we have been glossing over the distinction between “everything” and “everybody” and the other pairs ending in “-thing” and “-body”. It is time to bring up the most useful feature of Lojban variables: the ability to restrict their ranges. ”

“ All children don’t go to some school (not just some children) . Lojban provides a negation form which more closely emulates natural language negation. This involves putting “naku” before the selbri, instead of a “na”. “naku” is clearly a contradictory negation, given its parallel with prenex bridi negation. Using “naku”, Example 11.1 can be expressed as:
11.4) su'oda poi verba naku klama su'ode poi ckule Some which-are children don’t go-to some which-are schools. Some children don’t go to a school. ”

“ Although Lojban is called a logical language, not every feature of it is “logical”. In particular, the use of “le” is incompatible with logical reasoning based on the description selbri, because that selbri may not truthfully apply: you cannot conclude from my statement that
1.6) mi viska le nanmu I see the-one-I-refer-to-as-the man. I see the man/men. that there really is a man; the only thing you can conclude is that there is one thing (or more) that I choose to refer to as a man. ”

“ Everything sees me. Of course, this example is false, because there are many things which do not see the speaker. It is not easy to find simple truthful examples of so-called universal claims (those which are about everything) , so bear with us for a while. (Indeed, some Lojbanists tend to avoid universal claims even in other languages, since they are so rarely true in Lojban.)
The Lojban translation of Example 3.1 is
3.2) ro da zo'u da viska mi For-every X : X sees me. When the variable cmavo “da” is preceded by “ro”, the combination means “For every X” rather than “There is an X”. ”

“ Everyone who goes to the store walks across the field. But there is a subtle difference between Example 8.1 and Example 8.2. Example 8.2 tells us that, in fact, there are people who go to the store, and that they walk across the field. A sumti of the type “ro da poi klama” requires that there are things which “klama”: Lojban universal claims always imply the corresponding existential claims as well. ”

“ There are various possible translations of universal claims in English: sometimes we use “anybody/anything” rather than “everybody/everything”. Often it makes no difference which of these is used: when it does make a difference, it is a rather subtle one which is explained in Section 8. ”

“ The question raised by Example 7.1 is, does each of the dogs bite the same two men, or is it possible that there are two different men per dog, for six men altogether? If the former interpretation is taken, the number of men involved is fixed at two ”