Date:  Thu, 13 Nov 1997 23:01:12 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199711140401.XAA03439@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Organization: University of Central Lancashire
Subject:      Re: le/lo
X-To:         LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011
Content-Length: 3543
X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 13 23:01:23 1997
X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU

Bob:
>    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.

{lo} is intrinsically non-specific and {le} is intrinsically
specific. There's no way of using {lo} as specific or {le}
as non-specific.

> And sometimes there can be more than
> one.  But sometimes there *is* only one.  In this case, the general
> and the specific merge.

When there is only one member of a category, the specific/nonspecific
distinction is vacuous.

> Specificity is a sometime side-effect of veridicality.

I am baffled as to how you can conclude this.

> 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.)

I'm afraid I don't understand at all what you are saying. I don't
even see what your basic point is.

> 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.

Can you clarify what bearing this has on le v. lo?

--And