From cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.bitnet!LOJBAN Wed Aug 26 17:04:38 1992 Return-Path: Date: Wed Aug 26 17:04:38 1992 Message-Id: <9208261716.AA22753@relay2.UU.NET> Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!oasis.icl.co.uk!I.Alexander.bra0122 Sender: Lojban list Comments: W: Field "Resent-To:/To:" duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: cbmvax!uunet!oasis.icl.co.uk!I.Alexander.bra0122 Subject: RE: gadri X-To: lojbab@grebyn.com X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: RO lo terspuda be tu'a la djan. kau,n. > > {le cukta} means > > "the-thing-which-I-am-describing-as-a book", but with the > > rider that I don't feel the need to be more specific, because > > I expect you to know from the context which book I am talking > > about. This is an alternative way of referring to previously- > > mentioned sumti, without always assigning a KOhA. > > Not necessarily. When I talk of "le cukta", the context for figuring > out which book may be extra-linguistic. There is no reason to assume that > I have necessarily mentioned this book before. In fact, we recently introduced > the particle "bi'u" to distinguish between old and new information: "lebi'u > cukta" is a newly mentioned book. I intended the word "context" to be understood in the broadest sense, including all the extra-linguistic factors. Obviously I didn't make this clear. > > Note that this makes the specific/definite descriptions > > ambiguous. When I use {le}, I _am_ referring to something > > specific, *but I'm not specifying it now*. It is something > > which has been specified earlier. > > Or not. "le vi cukta" may be just "this book here in my hand" even if I > have not >mentioned< the book before -- I still expect you to figure out > from the >total situation< which book is meant. OK, it is something which is specified by means other than the words I am using _now_. > > When I use {lo}, I am > > almost certainly immediately going to start telling you > > enough about it so that it becomes specific. > > Again, perhaps not. I may simply not care about the specifics: > > "lo remna cu xekri" means "some humans are black", without any > intent to specify which. OK, perhaps a put it a _little_ bit too strongly. Still, I think such statements are rare in isolation. And you've already become more specific than it was to start with. If you followed it with {le remna}, this would probably be understood as {ro lo remna poi xekri}, in other words "_these_ humans". This leads us in to Bob's comments. tu'a la lojbab. > "lo ratcu" is not necessarily non-specific; it IS veridical - it claims > that whatever is described REALLY IS a rat, and is not, say, merely being > described as one for convention or convenience (which might be the case > with "le"). It is the implicit quantifier on "lo" that makes it indefinite > AND non-specific - the outer "su'o" means that ANY thing meetin the > description will do. If the outer quantifier is "ro", the result is quite > definite: you are claiming about every single thing meeting the (possibly > restricted by a relative clause) description. Initially I was quite worried about this tie-up between specificity (ugh - {ka satci}?) and quantifiers, but it's gradually beginning to make more sense. I _think_ you're saying that if you want to _be_ (veridically) specific, then you have to talk about _all_ things which satisfy the given conditions, which it is then up to you to make as restrictive as necessary. This is distinct from _claiming_ specificity, which you can do with {le}, at the expense of necessarily relying on the audience's good will to interpret your incomplete description. > Similarly, if you use a > relative clause with "voi", then you remain veridical on the main > description, but the restriction is to a definite/specific subset. I'm not quite sure what point you're making here. A {poi} restriction would also be to a definite/specific subset. But {lo remna voi ratcu} allows you to talk about some (real) people, who you're _describing_ as "rats". co'omi'e .i,n.