Article: 4116 of sci.lang: Path: marob!phri!sci.ccny.cuny.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!lee From: phri!sci.ccny.cuny.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!lee >From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee) Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Re: possible readings of "John seeks a bike or a fish" Message-ID: <7896@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: 26 May 90 13:44:06 GMT References: <265D4D6F.5886@marob.masa.com> Organization: University of Hawaii Lines: 17 X-From-Space-Date: Tue May 29 12:16:50 EDT 1990 X-From-Space-Address: phri!sci.ccny.cuny.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!lee From article <265D4D6F.5886@marob.masa.com>, by cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan): >... >A discussion on the articles "le" and "lo": In Lojban, a distinction is made >between veridical and non-veridical description. A veridical description >claims that the thing described actually exists and meets the description: >... In an example with an indefinite and a single scope-taking element, e.g. "John tries", a two way distinction for nominals suffices, since the only possibilities are that the indefinite is in or out of one scope. But what if there are two or more scope-taking items? Then the indefinite may be in or out of several scopes. What do you do then? (cf. `Mary doesn't want John to seek a bike.') A two-way, or n-way, morphological classification of nominals can not in principle express all the logical distinctions, because they are unbounded in number. Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu