From mark@kli.org Thu Aug 26 06:38:36 1999 X-Digest-Num: 222 Message-ID: <44114.222.1218.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: 26 Aug 1999 13:38:36 -0000 From: mark@kli.org Subject: Re: Anselmisms and gadro X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1218 >From: A Rosta >Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 14:23:00 +0100 > >From: A Rosta > >> This is the age-old chestnut of Lojban's habit of conflating >> non-veridicality with specificity. There's not much I can do about >that. >> >> ~mark > >If you don't mind doing without gadri -- and they are >superfluous -- then disconflation is easy. > >veridical & nonspecific: da poi [= lo] >veridical & specific: ko'a poi >nonveridical & specific: ko'a voi [= le] > >More generally, {da} (& co.) gives you nonspecifics, {ko'a} >(& co.) gives you specifics, and {voi} gives you the means to >make nonveridical descriptions. But {ko'a} isn't specific in the same way "the" is. {ko'a} is a bound pronoun, referring to something in particular that must have been defined already. "The book" (one which I have in mind, as opposed to just any old book) is not a "ko'a" yet; I haven't defined it with enough detail and I haven't bound it to the variable. And while I can see that it could be argued that since it's one I have in mind, it's covered by {le}, I still feel there's some difference. I know that {bi'u} was introduced to help answer this problem partly. ~mark