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Date:         Wed, 8 Sep 1993 17:46:57 BST
Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk
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From: Iain Alexander <I.Alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: TECH: Mark Shoulson waiting for a taxi
X-To:         ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk
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To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO
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X-From-Space-Date: Wed Sep  8 12:57:12 1993
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la and. cusku di'e
> Will it could happen without mark waiting for it
> If mark were waiting for a specific event, and the one
> that happens is not the one he was waiting for. Now the
> use of _lo_ rather than _le_ rules out this interpretation,
> but your example means (or can be paraphrased as) "There is
> some event of a taxi going, such that mark is awaiting it" -
> this would be appropriate if we knew Mark was going to
> be waiting for a taxi, but didn't know which one he was
> waiting for. But we need more than this; we need our
> statement to be falsified if an event of a taxi's coming
> along happens and Mark is not awaiting it. So I provisionally
> offer:

>       la mark. denpa loi nu klama fa lo kartcrtaksi

I *think* I see what you're worried about.  It's that there
might be a specific taxi (or taxis) that Mark is waiting for,
or on the other hand he might not care.

I use to think that this was the distinction between

    da poi karcrtaksi zo'u la mark. denpa lo za'i da ba'o klama

and

    la mark. denpa lo za'i da poi karcrtaksi zo'u da ba'o klama

The first is a particularly interesting case, since the taxi(s) is/are
_specific_, in the sense that it is what >Mark< _has in mind_.
It's not obvious that our {lo/le} distinction has anything to
say about this.  But then if my first bridi above works for this
awkward case, why doesn't it work if it's me waiting for the taxi
rather than Mark?  Does it matter whether we're looking at the
bridi as a whole, outside the prenex, where {da} might be considered
non-specific; or just at the quantified statement, inside the prenex,
where {da} could refer to a specific taxi.  That was the way I learned
to interpret quantified statements - that inside the quantification
the bound variable should be thought of as referring to a single
(representative?) instance.

    exists(x):  Mark waits for x

means to me that there are some specific thing(s), as far as Mark's
concerned, which he is waiting for.  Of course, from the outside,
we needn't have any idea what they are, so externally they're
non-specific, but Mark knows what's what.


> It may indeed by appropriate to add in NUs & ZAHOs, but it is
> not relevant to the bits of meaning I was tussling with.

I think they help clarify, but I agree this is largely a side issue,
and probably not worth discussing further until we understand the main
problem above.

co'o mi'e .i,n.