From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue Mar 21 00:54:29 1995 From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Date: Tue Mar 21 00:54:29 1995 Subject: Re: On {lo} and existence Status: RO Message-ID: And: > > > > true(proposition346,universe-of-discourse,1) > > true(proposition347,every world,1) > > But in what world do we evaluate this one? It has to be a world that > > contains every world for the predication to make sense. > > Irrespective of which world you normally inhabit, to evaluate > true(p346,...) you hop over to universe-of-discourse & check that > p346 is true. To evaluate true(p347,....) you go to each world > & check p347 is true of it. Yes, but the question is in which world do we evaluate p348, that is the proposition "Ax, world(x), true(p347, x, 1)" What do we put as the second argument of: true(proposition348,the-mother-of-all-worlds,1) and calling that prop349, in what world do we evaluate it. And what about the next one, and so on. This obviously never ends, and seems pretty pointless, so I prefer not to start it. I don't think that every claim has a true() claim associated with it. > I don't know how to cope with primitives, though I do think having > them is better than not having them. Say we go for your extension- > listing method. Then we have a definition like this: > {,,} > - one world-independent definition. Only if every world knows about every other one. Otherwise from a given world you can't know the full definition. You seem to be saying that the meaning of a predicate depends on context, which is very true for natlangs. I suppose it will be true for Lojban as well. > > But there we know what the design is already. What is the design's > > intention with respect to pictures of goats? Can {lo kanba} be only > > a figment of someone's imagination? Probably not according to the > > design. If fluent speakers use it as such, then obviously the design > > is not a good description of the real language. > > Or, as I would put it, those fluent speakers are speaking a different > language/dialect. Fine. But it is better to have a grammar that describes the language that is used. Grammars of languages that are not used don't seem all that necessary. > > I don't think I've used {lo nu} very much. Usually with events I have a > > particular one in mind, and there's no need to use non-specificity. > > I don't have a particular one in mind when I'm trying to do something. Then you run into the oppacity problem, which is even worse. You are saying that it is not the case that: There is some event (imaginary or not) such that you try that _it_ happens. But rather that: You try that there be some event of a certain class that happens. In that case, even {mi troci lo da'i nu broda} doesn't work. You need: mi troci lo da'i nu lo nu broda cu fasnu Or more concisely: mi troci lo da'i nu da nu broda Jorge