Message-Id: <199601060238.EAA09914@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 6 Jan 1996 01:22:27 GMT
Reply-To: ia@stryx.demon.co.uk
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Iain Alexander <ia@stryx.demon.co.uk>
Subject:      Re: tech:opaque
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 2323
Lines: 53

In message <819994541.6681.0@cunyvm.cuny.edu> pcliffje@CRL.COM writes:
> pc:
> Pretty close.  Actually, I think that virtually all opacity is bridi
> subordination, but that some cases of subordination are
> encapsulated in lexical items, so that -- to take an English example
> which is relatively safe  -- "hunt" has in reality the same structure
> as "intends/desires that ... TAKE ---", where the ... is filled by the
> subject of "hunt" and the --- by the object, which is thus
> subordinated in an intentional context.

Sure, you can define lexical items that way, but I reckon what
you end up with is no longer a predicate - it's some other
kind of operator,  one whose arguments cannot be fully
interpreted (as referring to anything), but must
be treated in some other fashion.  (The traditional solution
for this is treat arguments as text, but I can conceive that
there might be su'o intermediate solution.)

Lojban gismu are "sold" as predicate words, and I've assumed
that the same applies to other selbri in general.  I could
accept other kinds of "lexical item" in the language, but I
would much prefer them to be clearly marked as such.

ni'o
As for pictures, I think that what is depicted is some sort of
abstraction (in the most general sense) of/from the object in
question, which might be appropriately represented by a Lojban
abstraction (NU), but again probably not involving {lo broda}.

no'i
Given that these concepts are not well understood, I suspect
that the best we can do at the moment is to represent them
by something like {tu'a ce'u broda}, assuming that
a) {ce'u} is Cowan's proposed lambda pseudo-quantifer
b) {tu'a} provides a sufficiently closed context to
bind the {ce'u}.

({lo ka ce'u da broda} is more-or-less just \x:broda(x),
from which I believe we could in principle derive something
suitable, but I don't think Lojban has any mechanisms to
process lambda abstractions, which are in any case fairly new.)

romai
In another post you say something about making it
difficult to say simple things.  I contend that one of the
things that Lojban in particular highlights is that things
that we express "simply" in natlangs frequently aren't at
all simple.

co'o mi'e .i,n.
--
Iain Alexander                    ia@stryx.demon.co.uk
                    I.Alexander@bra0125.wins.icl.co.uk