From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199411172037.AA00760@access2.digex.net> Subject: Re: Cowan's summary: opacity and sumti-raising Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 15:37:27 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199411160553.AA08143@nfs2.digex.net> from "Jorge Llambias" at Nov 15, 94 08:30:55 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24beta] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1670 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 17 15:44:07 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab la xorxes. cusku di'e > > The degenerate case "I'm looking for my book (+specific)" > > Why degenerate? I often find myself looking for things that I forgot where > I left. I don't see what is so exceptional about this circumstance. It is admittedly a common case, but it is not the general case. > > becomes "I'm looking > > for something with the property of being my book", i.e. > > > > mi sisku le ka du le mi cukta > > Why add this {le ka du}, when the unmarked case would naturally mean that? > Very unzipfist. It's natural for "seek", but "sisku" is something different. > > mi sisku tu'a le mi cukta > > Which could also mean "I'm looking for something to write on my book" or > any of a million other things related to my book. It is vague If you don't like vagueness, use "le ka du". Only one syllable longer than "tu'a", and perfectly precise. Precision and verbosity are in inverse proportion, as usual. > > However, if we say "I'm looking for an English translation of Jorge de > > Montemayor's >Diana<", the "le ka" formulation saves us from error even > > if there is no such translation. > > Here I would use {lo'e}: > > mi sisku lo'e xe fanva be la'o sy Diana sy bei la gliban > > > {lo'e broda} doesn't claim that {lo broda} exists, does it? I don't know that that has been settled. But I find the idea of an archetype of a non-existent (in the appropriate universe of discourse) thing rather problematic. What could be predicated of this {lo'e xe fanva}, other than what we say in the embedded place structures? -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.