From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Thu May 03 08:41:51 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 3 May 2001 15:41:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 5209 invoked from network); 3 May 2001 15:41:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 3 May 2001 15:41:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta1 with SMTP; 3 May 2001 15:41:31 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Thu, 3 May 2001 16:23:09 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Thu, 03 May 2001 16:43:20 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 16:42:47 +0100 To: jjllambias , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] le medomoi e le memimoi e le memi'omoi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 7046 Jorge: #>The lei/loi versus le/lo distinction doesn't matter if there's only #>one of a given thing. But if you're not certain of this, but wish #>to refer to a single thing, then lei/loi are the appropriate #>choice. # #If only lei/loi were less marked than le/lo, I would agree. But #I feel them as more marked, and I just don't think that {le du'u} #is wrong enough to justify the effort of unlearning it. I realize that this is for many people a pressing consideration in this=20 and other cases. But I think it goes against the spirit of Lojban to some extent, in that the only practicable way for the designers of Lojban to ensure that the encoded-markedness genuinely reflect conceptual markedness would be to have 'draft stages' of the language revised repeatedly=20 to on the basis of usage adjust encoded markedness to harmonize with=20 conceptual markedness. There just wouldn't have been enough people willing to engage in use of constantly changing language. The upshot is that either your usage is guided by the encoded markedness, which will result in more stylistic elegance and harmony, or your usage ignores the encoded markedness and says what you want to say and says it in the way you would want to say it, which would result in us actually learning something interesting. #>Loi is more appropriate than lei for at least two reasons. Firstly, #>there's no getting away from the fact that lei -- ko'a voi -- is=20 #>nonveridical #>and so makes truth-conditionally different claims from veridicals. # #If anything that would be an argument in favour of le/lei. I'm #not even sure that I know what a real du'u is. Okay. But this sort of issue would matter in contexts such as legislation (or patents?), where the meaning encoded by the language is binding. #>Secondly, the logic of ko'a voi/poi in contrast to da poi, is such that #>there is a referent (which must be established contextually, irrespectiv= e #>of whether it turns out that there is only one candidate referent). # #Both {ko'a voi} and {da poi} require that there be a referent, if #that's what you mean.=20 No. {da poi} requires a referent only for the sentence to be true. {ko'a} requires a referent for the sentence to be interpreted. Some linguisticians/logicians reserve the term 'referential' to=20 the ko'a type. #{ro da poi} is the only one that doesn't #have existential import, but {[ro] le [su'o]} and {[piro] lei [su'o]} #both do. # #>Hence #>use of le ~ lei ~ ko'a voi/poi is always more context-dependent than #>lo ~ loi ~ da poi. # #Maybe, but I still can't see that it makes any significant difference. #Do you have any examples where this could cause a problem? No, tho I haven't really tried to think of any. But I think of it more as an ideological/philosophical issue about how, in communicating=20 speaker meaning, we balance the burden of labour between logical sentence-meaning and the hearer's cooperative Gricean inferencing. Since all languages are equivalent with respect to the hearer's cooperative Gricean inferencing, it seems more interesting to me to concentrate on sentence-meanings. #>On top of this, some uses of "le nu" are plain wrong. # #In the case of {nu}, I have to admit that sometimes I use {le nu} #even though I suspect it is wrong. Maybe I should start paying #more attention to that. Yes, since your usage is currently the paragon model for others=20 to emulate. Or so I would advise anybody seeking a model. --And.