{lo} vs {le} is an ongoing dispute, but I think you hav= e caught most of the gist. {le} gets the referents and slaps a label = on them for convenience. But, if it is to be really convenient, it has to a= lmost fit at least, but that is not a requirement. So 'le' is rather = the opposite of intensional (using the sense, in this case) but is well nig= h purely referential, Gricean conventions aside. {lo), on the other hand, l= abels correctly but is very vague (out of context, at least) about what the= referents are for identification purposes. They do, however, have to= be in the domain of discourse; whether they exist is another question.&nbs= p; Indeed, using {lo broda} in a first level context guarantees that here is at least on broda in the domain of discourse.

From= : maikxlx <maikxlx@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, November 13, 2011 10:19:48 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban= and Truth-Conditional Semantics

2011/11/13 Jorge Llamb=EDas <jjllambias@gmail.com&= gt;

S =3D "su'o lo ctuca cu tavla ro le tadni"

The truth conditions of S are as follows:

- There are individual entities C whom Speaker denotes as "lo ctuca"
- There are individual entities T whom Speaker denotes as "le tadni"
- There is a predicate relationship (x1, x2) denoted as "tavla",

interpreted as the set of all ordered pairs of individual= s such that

x1 talks to x2 (full encyclopedia definition of a predicate can be cited as needed).
- Ex in C, Ay in T tavla(x, y) is true. In other words, for some x among C, for all y among T, x talks to y.

I think that ctuca(x) needs to be an explicit par= t of the truth conditions due to the veridicality of "lo". On the oth= er hand, I don't think that "le tadni" entails tadni(y). Rather, the = canonical explanation of le tadni as "something described as tadni" seems t= o invoke somehow the pure _intension_ of tadni. I.e. there really don= 't have to exist su'o tadni in order for le tadni to exist; rather, "tadni"= seems to give a cognitive clue, or provide an index, to identify and track= certain entities based on some salient relevance or resemblance. &nbs= p; Of course it is possible that le tadni cu tadni, but it's not necessary.= That's how I understand it at least.

The other important difference between the two gadri is specificity; th= e specificity of "le" can and probably should be formalized by using some s= ort of choice function; David Hilbert's epsilon operator, which I think is = the original example of a choice function, has been used by some linguists = to formally capture definiteness in natlangs.

I doubt anyone has any issue with that. The issue in this round of
discussion seems to be about the "given model (universe of discourse)"
part. If you take that as a given, there is no discussion to be had.
If you don't take it as a given, then in some context the individual
entities whom Speaker denotes as "lo ctuca" might be John, Alice and
Mary, while in a different context they might be math teachers,
English teachers and biology teachers, or good teachers, bad teachers
and regular teachers, or ... And given that we can have different
domains, there is the issue of what happens when you want to jump from
one domain to another, when you want to deduce what happens in one
domain when all you have are facts from a different domain. Or how can
Speaker give enough information so that Listener can figure out what
the domain is without too much trouble.

Speaker can have many things in mind that he choo= ses not make explicit, but if "lo" is taken to be a nonspecific article, th= en I don't think that "su'o lo ctuca" ever implies a truth-conditional comm= itment to the identities (specific) of the denoted entities, except in the = trivial case in which the model contains exactly one ctuca.

It's not 100% clear to me whether unquantified "lo ctuca" generally imp= lies a commitment even to _existence_, much less to identity, of denoted en= tities.

The strength of "le" is that it implies a commitment = to both existence and identity, though I hear this gadri may be on the wane= in favor of "lo".

Over all, things seem very clear to me only when "le" and explicit quan= tifiers over "lo" are used, as in this example "su'o lo ctuca cu tavla ro l= e tadni". I think it would be interesting to analyze other examples i= n a similar way.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

mu'o mi'e .maik.

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