Message-ID: <3469F10E.5EF@locke.ccil.org> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 13:10:22 -0500 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: le/lo References: <199711121217.HAA00163@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1865 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 12 13:10:22 1997 X-From-Space-Address: - la .and. cusku di'e > > That part of the cmavo list has not been updated since the discovery > > of the "specificity" category, but "le" has always been used for > > specific things. Because of the specificity, the truthful > > applicability of the referential predicate has become logically > > irrelevant, as in my example above (which does not mean that it > > is pragmatically useless). > > I may have misunderstood you, but in the case of specific referents, > nonveridicality is useful in identifying definite referents (i.e. > in identifying the referent to the addressee), but one still > of course wishes to predicate things veridically of specific > referents. I wouldn't agree that the veridicality of any > predicate is logically irrelevant. Nor would I. By "referential predicate" I meant the (syntactic) predicate within the *le*-description. It is irrelevant to the truth value of "le cinfo cu blanu" whether the referent of "le cinfo" really is a lion, but it is most certainly relevant whether the referent really is blue. For "lo cinfo cu blanu", the referent must be both a lion and blue for the bridi to be true. This is the distinction which is captured by the term "veridical". > > a) le -discussion cu du lo -quagmire > > b) le -discussion cu du le -quagmire > > > > where (a) says that this discussion is identical with some actual > > quagmire (false), and (b) says that this discussion is > > identical with some specific thing I describe as a quagmire > > (not provably false, but bizarre). > > I don't see why (b) is bizarre. It seems perfectly OK to me. On reflection, I agree. > > "le co'e" is really "da" with a hint about the > > referent. > > I don't think I'd buy that. You are right, of course. That was a brain fart. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban