Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8881 invoked from network); 30 May 2000 21:44:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 30 May 2000 21:44:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo19.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.9) by mta3 with SMTP; 30 May 2000 21:43:58 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo19.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.9.) id a.63.640b853 (9155) for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 17:43:49 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <63.640b853.26659015@aol.com> Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 17:43:49 EDT Subject: Closing the discussion on indirect questions To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 2888 Content-Length: 4306 Lines: 68 While the syntax of indirect questions is pretty much under control with the combinations of and , the meanings remain unclear, especially how to expand out into ordinary quantifier language. Attempts to do this generally have fallen afoul of the peculiarities of different contexts in which these expressions occur, mainly -- but not always -- intensional ones. Even the instant case, "What I have for dinner depends upon what is in the fridge." was never completely solved. In this case, however, it was because of the variety of dependencies that might arise: sometimes, whether I had it or not might depend on whether it was there, at other times it might depend on what alternatives were there to going out and getting it (I got me a hamburger because there were only brussel sprouts and liver in the ice box) . And of course, given that there are a lot of things in the fridge, which one gets picked -- if any -- seems to reach beyond what can be easily sorted out. And then there is the effect of an empty box and the possibilities of no dinner. One fairly direct paraphrase -- after "The answer to the question "What is in my refrigerator?" ...." is "The fact that the content of my refrigerator is what it is ... " or "the fact that the actual content of my refrigerator is the content of my refrigerator..." But the natural first reading of that, whether with or (both plausible in this case, though slightly different) is the tautologous "the fact that my refrigerator contains the content of my refrigerator" and the same for the "the fact that my dinner consists, of my dinner" or some such. We can save this by exporting the sumti, which changes the meaning even though "the fact that..." is not normally intensional: "As for the contents of my refrigerator and the menu for my dinner, the fact that my refrigerator contains the former "affects" the fact that I eat the latter for dinner." Getting into prenexes suggests a general solution to indirect questions, related to the "question as set of answers" position in logic. (what preda) predb = "for x, if preda x, then predb x. The quantifiers probably need, we have noted, a relevance condition (as "all" usuallly does) to eliminate never-occurring cases (the number four, Julius Cawsar and anchovies in my refrigerator). In at least some cases, the negatives also play a role: the absence of some item from my refrigerator may also affect the menu for dinner. So the present case is something like "for every relevant x and y, if x is a food item in my refrigerator and y is a potential menu item, the fact that x is in my refrigerator either encourages or discourages the fact that y is on the dinner menu." The wishy-washy predicate that attempts to expand a bit on "affects" needs much spelling out for particular cases and particular people, but perhaps comes close to the general idea. Instantiations, it turns out, are still best done in prenex position, though in the general case, the move to the interior is not too problematic: "the fact that there is rutabaga in the refrigerator encourages that hamburgers be on the dinner menu." When intensional contexts are involved, as the naturally frequently are with indirect questions, the prenex instantiation seems necessary to avoid the problems that arise about identifying someone in an intensional context. If John knows who came and Paul came then John knows that Paul came, but that last claim is ambiguous, for John may never have heard of Paul and have him identified in some totally wrong way (the drummer rather than the vocal), but it will still be true (the other claims accepted) that as far as Paul is concerned, John knows that he came, i.e., of the person who is in fact Paul, John knows that he came (albeit he would describe it totally differently). In this case again, negative cases seem relevant -- at least that some list John gives is complete. Although there is some claim that being able to give partial lists are also knowing who came. It is not clear whether this is a complete solution -- or even a solution at all (though no major problems were cited) to the question about indirect questions. Any further discussion to finish this topic off? This time 'round.