From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Oct 23 06:33:34 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sat, 23 Oct 1993 06:33:34 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sat, 23 Oct 1993 06:33:29 -0400 Message-Id: <199310231033.AA00655@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5065; Sat, 23 Oct 93 06:31:26 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3117; Sat, 23 Oct 93 06:34:26 EDT Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1993 20:32:08 +1000 Reply-To: Nick Nicholas Sender: Lojban list From: Nick Nicholas Subject: TECH: Topic constructions and prenexes X-To: Lojban Mailing List To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Lojbab has often touted the fact that, with our prenexes, we can emulate the Chinese and Japanese topic constructions. Having had to take a brief look at Japanese recently, I'm not sure it does. The distinction between topic and subject in Japanese, at least, is captured in Lojban by {bi'unai}/ {bi'u}, and in other languages by the corresponding mechanisms for distinguishing new referents from ones already introduced in discourse. The typical logical use for prenexes ("For all X" etc.) is to introduce new referents, not old ones. I'm thus not at all sure that, just because its syntax corresponds to the Japanese construct (or the English one: "As for him..."), its semantics will as well. It sounds more like we're trying to make the prenex syntactic construct do two jobs at once, and I'm not convinced we'll get away with it... %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, % (nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au) quaero mei similes et adjungor pravis. % Nick Nicholas, CogSci victim, --- Archipoeta, _Confessio_. % Univ. of Melbourne, Australia