Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 22:38:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711140338.WAA01301@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com Sender: Lojban list From: bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM Subject: Re: le/lo X-To: a.rosta@uclan.ac.uk X-cc: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU, bob@rattlesnake.com To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: (message from And Rosta on Wed, 12 Nov 1997 12:01:08 GMT+0) Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3592 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 13 22:38:52 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU And Rosta wrote: Unless: > As an experiment, translate each of your uses of {le} with the long > gloss; similarly with {lo}; and pay attention to context. The > problems of specificity will or will not make themselves felt, as the > case may be. When they do make themselves felt, you have to use the > other standard Lojban methods for specification, such as expressing > color or number or tense. I suspect you misunderstand specificity. It is not a question of whether the addressee can identify the referent. It is a question of whether the speaker is predicating something of a particular referent at all. It's more like identifiability-*in-principle* than identifiability-*in-practise*. Veridicality is an intrinsic characteristic of {lo}; it is an operator that says `one-or-more-of-all-the-things-which-really-are'. Specificity is not intrinsic. And sometimes there can be more than one. But sometimes there *is* only one. In this case, the general and the specific merge. Specificity is a sometime side-effect of veridicality. In other words, I have been speaking about *both* identifiability-in-principle and identifiability-in-practice. It is a question of whether the addressee can identify the *context*, as well as the *referent*. Suppose there is exactly *one* object in principle and practice. To my way of speaking English, it is often a bad translation to refer to that object as `a'. This is a matter of what you consider the best translation of a Lojban utterance into English. For example, there is just one original Mona Lisa painting. To refer to `a Mona Lisa' conveys something quite different to an English speaker than to refer to `the Mona Lisa'. (And, no, I am not talking about an entity that is _named_, although that is what the English usage suggests; I am considering the situation in which I wish to make predications about members of a category that meet the veridicality test, in this case, the one and only member of the category.) What this discussion keeps coming down to, I think, is the question of what people consider a fair statement of context and a fair translation from that context. I say: For the purposes of this discussion, there is just *one* real cat in the whole universe. And I conclude, that as a side effect of this, you can identify the cat to which I am referring, since there is no other. Others say, Hmmm... in a context in which there is exactly one cat in the universe in both principle and practice, the best translation is always to refer to that cat in English as `a cat', not ever as `the cat'. In exactly the same way, we always translate so as to refer to the one original Mona Lisa painting in existance as `a Mona Lisa', and never as `the Mona Lisa'. We only use `the' in translation so as to refer to something that is not necessarily the Mona Lisa when we are designating some entity as the Mona Lisa for the purposes of a discussion. It goes without saying that if your context is always that of the whole universe, not reduced by any conversational or other context, then a predication about `cat' is about identifiability-*in-principle* and `a' becomes a preferred translation, since in that whole universe there is more than one cat. But that circumstance is a different context than the one I am discussing. -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com 25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@ai.mit.edu Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725