From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Sep 1 08:40:50 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:43:20 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:43:16 -0400 Message-Id: <199309011643.AA00492@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8147; Wed, 01 Sep 93 12:41:46 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8654; Wed, 01 Sep 93 12:44:07 EDT Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:40:50 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: TECH: specifity & definiteness X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9309011553.AA18029@grebyn.com> from "Mr Andrew Rosta" at Sep 1, 93 04:36:27 pm Status: RO X-Status: (This is John Cowan; snark is temporarily down.) la .and. cusku di'e > I quite agree: specificity is distinct from definiteness. Specific > referents may or may not be definite. I still don't understand this. What is an an example of a specific indefinite reference (in English)? > Definiteness is non-truth- > conditional, so appropriate for a .UI cmavo, How's that again? "I saw the man" entails "I saw a man", but not vice versa, so truth conditions are definitely affected. > whereas specificity > affects truth conditions, so I would be inclined to treat le v. > lo as specific v. non-specific (though I do not understand what the > distinction between le/lo officially is). Again, with feeling: Remember that although we loosely refer to LE cmavo as articles, they are really more like pronoun+relatives: "lo kanba" is not "a goat" but "that-which-really is-a-goat", because "kanba" is a stative verb, not a noun. Lojban has NPs but no single-word nouns. (I'm ignoring the issue of number.) le/lei/le'i descriptions need not describe accurately, and are implicitly restricted to those things the speaker has in mind. lo/loi/lo'i descriptions must describe accurately on pain of failing to refer, and are unrestricted. la/lai/la'i descriptions don't describe at all, but name; they are also implicitly restricted in the same way as the le-family. > I don't, incidentally, > see that bihu/bihunai corresponds to definite/indefinite - or > rather, I do see that it doesn't. Correct. It is a discourse marker. > > > Well, actually "zo'e" does well there, since "zo'e" and "le co'e" mean much > > > the same thing. Both of them refer to something specific-but-unspecified. > > > There is the difference that "le co'e" keeps the force of "le": one or more > > > individuals, probably not a set or mass. > > > > I'm not sure I believe this. I thought that {zo'e} was totally > > ambiguous, and could be specific or non-specific, universally > > or existentially or exact-numerically quantified, or any other > > (censored) thing. > > This is my understanding too. Yes, you are both right. Nonetheless, pragmatically "zo'e" does work pretty well as a substitute for the non-quantificational sense of English "something".