From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Sat Mar 6 22:46:43 2010 From: ucleaar Subject: Re: On {lo} and existence Date: Wed Mar 22 02:20:02 1995 In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 20 Mar 95 19:46:52 EST.) Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Mar 22 02:20:02 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Message-ID: Jorge: > > > > > 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)" In any or every world. It makes no difference. The result is the same. > I don't think that every claim has a true() claim associated with it. Certainly we can entertain a proposition without claiming it to be true. > > 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. The Magic Truth Evaluation Engine knows about every world. > 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. I don't think I'm saying this. At least not if we're using a truth-conditional rather than psychological model of semantics. > > > 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. This is a difference between invented grammar and discovered grammar. I am interested in Lojban grammar partly because it is designed (i.e. invented). Its necessity doesn't matter to me. One may take a different view, and study the grammar as if Lojban were a natural language (which is how artificial lgs without invented grammar, such as Esperanto, must be studied), but I wouldn't have much interest in doing that until it becomes a native language. > > > 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. That's right, & I wd prefer to use a lujvo whose x2 is {le duhu} or {lo siho} in this context. But that said, we can define {troci}, or some lujvo of it, so that the x2 is dementalized: There is a possibly imaginary event the occurrence of which would constitute a successful outcome (by x1's standards) to x1's exertions. In this case {mi troci lo dahi nu klama} would not run into an opacity problem. At any rate, it remains clear that {nitcu}, {troci} et al. continue to lack adequate definitions. --- And