From lojban+bncCJ2UzZHuDRDNvN_zBBoEQ6V8Yg@googlegroups.com Mon Sep 19 17:29:12 2011 Received: from mail-fx0-f61.google.com ([209.85.161.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R5oCz-0007Dn-Dy; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:12 -0700 Received: by fxg17 with SMTP id 17sf26803fxg.16 for ; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:02 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=Ta2hH6CuJozAf6Do/X97nCP6ibQkE6nrrHCCcG40FOg=; b=qhBJ6o0rgSgL9cLYH0kh2PTAOZ5Ni27/x4DqwniVSqTMijcrX7IMOzgdVm4ZXOStTa RxX86U3tql74snuEbAqj9cth3ZhegSypuvEnT1ukvMNBC6jHaIcmCtFv0f6l8S4GZB9S 3u1IEfBb1ZetM0vlkA577FC6oNSdbGeDKGL4c= Received: by 10.223.44.4 with SMTP id y4mr45826fae.36.1316478541343; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:01 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.204.138.72 with SMTP id z8ls843154bkt.3.gmail; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.141.199 with SMTP id n7mr33845bku.0.1316478540132; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.141.199 with SMTP id n7mr33844bku.0.1316478540118; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-fx0-f53.google.com (mail-fx0-f53.google.com [209.85.161.53]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id k16si3227864fah.0.2011.09.19.17.29.00 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:00 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of jjllambias@gmail.com designates 209.85.161.53 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.161.53; Received: by fxh2 with SMTP id 2so15513fxh.40 for ; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:29:00 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.223.6.77 with SMTP id 13mr213080fay.135.1316478539927; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:28:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.152.39.35 with HTTP; Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:28:59 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20110919231314.GI4310@gonzales> References: <20110914232007.GC6492@gonzales> <1316055853.22283.YahooMailRC@web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20110916000632.GD7274@gonzales> <20110918172927.GA4310@gonzales> <20110918213323.GB6878@gonzales> <20110919013653.GC6878@gonzales> <20110919231314.GI4310@gonzales> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:28:59 -0300 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?= To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: jjllambias@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of jjllambias@gmail.com designates 209.85.161.53 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=jjllambias@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Martin Bays wrote: > > In "I am in my garden", the world is specified. So the sentence is true > iff it holds of the referent of 'I' that it is, in that world, in my > garden. Nothing else concerning 'I' is involved. > > The same goes for the lions, except that there are likely many lions in > the specified world. By "world" do you mean "domain of discourse"? How is it specified? It seems that there are likely many lion manifestations just as there are likely many stages of me in our world. From a metaphysical perspective it is hard to think of lions without lion manifestations, but it is just as hard to think of me without stages of me. If there is a preference for domains of discourse with many lion manifestations over domains of discourse with many stages of me it does not seem to come from any formal law of language. >> It just says that if my garden is being ruined, it must be by >> something other than lions, or that if lions are ruining something, it >> must be something other than my garden, or if lions are doing >> something to my garden, it must be something other than ruining it, >> and so on. You may infer from it that no lion is ruining my garden, >> but that's not what it means. > > Ah, or is it that you're introducing something too subtle for me to > understand? Are you considering as part of the meaning of a sentence > something other than its truth conditions? i.e. would you agree that the > converse of the inference you just accepted is also valid? We've discussed this kind of inference, that involves changing the domain of discourse. That's the only subtlety I mean to introduce: in the original domain of discourse there weren't any lion manifestations, and so no logical inference to something involving such things would be possible. But... we can easily change the domain of discourse and then the sentence about lion manifestations would be true. But this is not a logical inference, it's a change to a new model of the world: lo cinfo cu daspo lo mi purdi .i sa'e su'o cinfo cu daspo lo mi purdi "Lions are destroying my garden. More precisely, some lions are destroying my garden." The second sentence just uses a more fine-grained model of the world. >> I don't want to introduce at any point an existential claim about >> individual lions. (If you do, you must then make exceptions for >> intensional contexts.) > > What do you mean? > > (I fear I know what you mean, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.) "I am hunting lions" can be true even if there is no lion manifestation such that I am hunting it. Somewhat analogously, "I sell books" could be true even if there is no stage of me that has ever sold a book. > So it does seem that the ontology Chierchia presents in my favourite > paper does fit rather well with your {lo} - you have it always giving > a Skolem function with values in that universe. > > Similarly for {zo'e}. > > Correct? I'm still reading the paper, so I'm not sure I can say much yet. Chierchia starts by classifying languages into three groups: [+arg, -pred] (Chinese), [-arg, +pred] (Romance) and [+arg, +pred] (Germanic, Slavic). As far as I can tell, Lojban should fall flatly with the Romance languages in this classification, since whatever syntactic nouns it may be said to have are exclusively predicative. On the other hand, Lojban has no plurals, which makes it more like Chinese in that respect. mu'o mi'e xorxes -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. 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