From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Mon Jul 17 08:09:06 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 23632 invoked from network); 17 Jul 2000 15:09:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 17 Jul 2000 15:09:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay3-gui.server.ntli.net) (194.168.4.200) by mta1 with SMTP; 17 Jul 2000 15:09:04 -0000 Received: from m1016-mp1-cvx1c.gui.ntl.com ([62.252.15.248] helo=andrew) by relay3-gui.server.ntli.net with smtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 13ECMh-0007gM-00 for lojban@egroups.com; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 15:59:28 +0100 To: Subject: RE: "which?" (was: RE: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:08:49 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <20000715173205.89789.qmail@hotmail.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 3641 > la and cusku di'e > > > > A's claim assumes that {le mlatu} is enough to identify > > > the cat. > > > >It doesn't assume this. Specificity is not the same as > >identifiability, at least not for the hearer. > > I don't know what word to use. "Sufficiently identifiable"? > "Enough information has been provided for you to take stock > of the referent I mean"? "Relevantly identified"? My point > is that if the listener has to ask "which?" to a {le broda} > from the speaker it is because {le} has failed. I understand your point; but I disagree with it, if by 'failed' you mean 'failed to communicate what it is designed to communicate'. We can see from English that you're wrong: A: A certain cat has left the room. B: Which cat? -- nothing peculiar about that. > If {le} > succeeds there is no need for the listener to ask "which?", > because the referent has been relevantly identified. > On the other hand a "which?" to a {lo broda} is a request > for additional information, That's right. > not a question to clarify a failed communication. For {le}, a which?-response is not necessarily to clarify a failed communication, but rather is a request for information that the {le}-user - the questionee - must have, because it was tacit in the use of {le}. A which?-response to a {lo}-statement is, as we agree, a request for additional information, but here it is not information tacit in the {lo}-statement, and the questionee may not have the information. > > >The point of this dialogue was to show that {le > >mo broda} needn't be asking a which-question. > > My impresion is that a successful answer to {le mo broda} > should not leave the questioner with a "which broda?" > doubt. Do you agree at least with that part? No, I don't agree with that part. > For it to be something else than a which-question, it > would require the questioner to already know the > referent of {le mo broda}. I don't know -- it depends whether the rules of Lojban say that the questioner is using {le} qua {le}, as a +specific reference, or that questions merely map out a lexicosyntactic template that specifies the blank that must be filled in to constitute the question's answer. > But if that is the case, > any replacement of {mo} will add zero information, > because the content of {le} phrases is intrinsically > identificatory/specificatory, only secondarilly > descriptive. Would you generalize this to all Q words within {le} sumti? E.g. {le patfu be ma}? I guess you would. What, then, about: A: mi na jimpe le nanmu se mamta ku (goi ko'a poi ke'a vi jufra) [I don't understand the son, i.e. this here sentence] B: le nanmu se mamta be ma [son of what?] A: lo ninmu zei gerku [a bitch] ? [I can't remember the words for 'male' and 'female'.] > >Okay, I'll discuss this {le ki'a} suggestion now. Here are > >two problems with it. > > > >First: > > > > A: le nanmu ............ le nanmu > > B: le ki'a nanmu > > > >B is saying that {le} provokes confusion. What sort of > >confusion? Presumably, about what the referent is. > > Right. > > >HOWEVER, it could simply be confusion about whether > >the two {le nanmu} sumti share the same referent. In > >this case, all B is saying "is this le ba'e, or not?", > >and B is not saying "give me sufficient information > >to identify the referent". > > I don't think I see the difference. There are at least > two possible referents, and B is in doubt as to which > one A means. Thus {le} has failed. Well, this is indeed a case where {le} has failed -- one can imagine a context like: A: "These two men, a scotsman and an irishman, walk into a pub, and the man says..." B: which man? The scotsman or the irishman? -- but note that B is not asking A to identify the referent from among all the men (or entities) in the world, even though A's use of {le} does guarantee that the reference is to a specific individual. > >Second: > > > >I may be wrong, but I don't think {le ki'a kau} can be > >assumed to work as an indirect question. Yet we do want > >to be able to say "He told me which book he was reading". > > But that's {le mokau cukta}. You wouldn't want to use > {ki'akau} (which is grammatical, BTW) I thought it was, but didn't know whether it meant anything. > unless you were > reporting the failed {le}, which is not something you > would normally want to do. Right. But I don't get the basis on which you're supporting {le ki'a} for direct "which?" and "le mo kau" for indirect "which?". > > > A is not making a specific reference there. > > > >John has answered this: > > > > % "A certain" in English is a way of making +specific > > % -definite sumti: I know what cat is meant (+specific), but > > % you don't (-definite). In Lojban "le bi'unai mlatu". > > I am not very persuaded by this specific vs. definite > distinction. As if speaker and listener were obtaining > different meanings from the same utterance, and yet that > was considered a succesful exchange. To me it sounds weird. The distinction is justified not only conceptually but also by the facts of natlangs: in Std Average European, indefinite articles can be +specific or -specific, but are -definite. (As for so-called definite articles, it is well-known that they have been the topic of furious debate for a century. My own view (stated in abbreviated form) is that they are -specific, and +definite by virtue of implicit universal quantification). "+specific -definite" is potentially communicatively meaningful because it is truth-conditionally distinct from "-specific". It doesn't give the addressee sufficient information to evaluate the truth of the speaker's utterance, but all the same, the addressee can still base inferences on the speaker's utterance. > >Maybe it would be more helpful to think of things this way: > > > >A; le broda goi ko'a cu brode > >B: ko'a mo > > > >Whatever question B is trying to ask, it remains the case that > >ko'a has a guaranteed referent, even if B cannot identify ko'a. > > But B's question is not very sensible if B doesn't know > what {ko'a} refers to. In that case B should ask {ko'a ki'a}. B doesn't know exactly which entity {ko'a} refers to, but B does know a certain amount about {ko'a}, namely that ko'a is being referred to by A, is brode, and is "du da voi ke'a broda". Quite possibily this information is sufficient for B's interpretational needs. > >I contend that B could equally well have said "le broda cu mo", > >where "le broda" would have a referent guaranteed either (a) > >by B being able to identify it, or (b) by it being coreferential > >with the {le broda} in A's utterance. > > I agree they are equivalent. I just don't think A is being > asked to provide identifying/specifying information. A can > provide any relevant information about {le broda}/{ko'a}, > but that is not what B wants to know when asking "which?". I agree. I was making a point not about how to ask "which" but about whether B could use {le broda} without themself being able to identify the referent. > You are concentrating on which-questions to rectify failed > identification, "to request identification", not necessarily "to rectify failed identification". > (I think those are {ki'a}) but which-questions > can also be initiatory: > > do zmanei le mo mlana be le ckana > Which side of the bed do you prefer? Right. I don't see this sort as different from the other. The English which-question is asking for the preferred side to be identified to the questioner. The Lojban question is asking for relevant information to be supplied about the type of the side; depending on context, the relevant information may or may not be identificatory. > >If B instead uses {le mlatu}, then this could refer to the same > >cat as A was talking about, even if B can identify it by no > >unique property other than the property of being talked about > >by A, but there is no guarantee of this coreference; A would > >have to glork it from context. > > > >{ri du ma} works okay though. > > I think {ri du ma} or {ko'a du ma} or {le mlatu cu du ma} do > work because as you say it is hard to find an alternative > intention for the question. {ri mo}, {ko'a mo} and > {le mlatu cu mo} on the other hand don't work for me, because > it could just mean "tell me something more about this cat". I won't argue with that. > But I think {le mo mlatu} works perfectly, and I find it > more elegant than {du}. Ah well. I think we've reached an impasse. At least we can summarize by saying that there is no explicit means of making a "please identify the referent" speech-act in Lojban. The argument is over how to work around the gap. You go for a more elegant workaround that would fail in more contexts than mine that you think less elegant. --And.