Message-Id: <m0r4JIs-00005bC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sun, 6 Nov 1994 17:54:02 -0800
Reply-To:     "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      lo
To:         lojban list <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
Content-Length: 3026
Lines: 46

        Somone suggested that I had special insight into dscriptions and
quantifier.  I sure don't in English other than years of experience
and even then I am often fooled, especially by isolated examples.  But in
Lojban it is a snap: descriptions start with a member of selma'o LE and
quantifiers start with members of RO or PA or with just a bound variable,
DA. Quantifiers involve DA, explicitly or implicitly, cases like
_su'o_broda_ (from _su'o_da_poi_broda_, not _lo_su'o_broda_, where _su'o_
is a cardinal, not a quantifier) pick up -- if need be -- the latest
available bound variable (I forget the reset time on running through the
unused ones -- probably "reasonable" is about right).
        I take it we all agree that quantifiers are always -specific and
hence automatically -definite as well (you can't know/depend on an
identification that has not been made). They also are and have to be
+veridical, since otherwise they could not hook up to a reference at
all.
        I take it also that we all agree that _le_  and its ilk in LE for
sets and masses are +specific, +definite and -veridical, since reference
is all there is here, the words used are just a guide to the referent,
not what determines it, a fancy _ti_, if you will.  The only comment I
would add is that +definite is less about whether we know what the
referent is but whether that knowledge is essential to understanding what
is being said.
        We also agree that _lo_ and its ilk are +veridical and
-definite.  I argue that, both because it is a description and to fill a
gap in the pattern, _lo_ and its ilk are +specific.  The +veridical is
then essential, for without a known referent (-definite), the referent
cannot be determined except through its properties.  I agree with Xorxes
that this means that the default quantifiers are wrong and that set me
wondering how those were set.  I have a memory of issuing a bunch of
obiter dicta on questions like that on the basis of 30 second
presentations of issues while I was in my Lojban oblivion phase.  If that
is the history, I'd like to say I have more information now and would
like to change my vote.
        In passing, I note that when we do know the identity of the
referent, it is often a good idea to use _le_, because the _lo_ reference
may not get who we think it does.  If we think bunker White (sorry about
being dated) is the richest man in the world, we may say that the richest
man in the world takes his lunch to work in a brown paper bag.  But the
Sultan of Brunei does not.  But it is amazing how much we can say about
something just on the basis of its veridical description, not knowing who
it refers to but that the referent is fixed.  We can say almost all the
historically interesting things about the assassin of Archduke Ferdinand
without a clue that it was Gavrilo Princip.  Indeed, I am not sure that I
did ever know that and it does not add much to what I already knew about
the situation.
        But all of this has absolutely NOTHING to do with opacity.