From lojbab@xxxxxx.xxxx Mon Dec 13 19:18:08 1999 X-Digest-Num: 310 Message-ID: <44114.310.1713.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 22:18:08 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" From: John Cowan >Pycyn@aol.com wrote: > > That is the point of xu'a, to remind us that we are in some intensional > > context like "Greek myths say." We do treat such sentences as true > and ones > > like "Pegasus is a unicorn" as false without the warning, so, in a logical > > language, we need the warning, either contextually or explicitly. > >I grasp that now, but I think that we need full semantic world-setting, >not just >a syntactic marker. Ray Smullyan's skeptic, after all, believes that the >mental >states he is experiencing now (while awake) are the same in kind as those he >experiences while dreaming, merely at a different level --- he would not be >surprised to "wake up" from this current life. If we need full semantic world-setting, we should have it in the form of sei metalinguistic parentheticals. If there is an advantage to something like xu'a (which is not clear) it would be for brevity. At which point we might find that one of the evidentials or attitudinals will suffice. ka'u or se'o, perhaps, may already be providing the role of xu'a. lojbab ---- lojbab ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS*** lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ " Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.