RE: [jboske] kau

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Jordan:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 11:07:17PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > Jordan:
> > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 11:33:58AM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > > On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Jordan DeLong wrote:
> > > > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 10:43:29AM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > > This is what is confusing you: You *can't* use da to refer to
> > > > > something specific 
> > > > 
> > > > We've had this discussion before, and it's where you said (da poi gerku
> > > > fi'o ponse mi) isn't specific, even if I only have one dog 
> > > 
> > > Yup. It isn't. In fact it suggests to the listener that you may
> > > own more than one dog 
> > > 
> > > It's like if I were to say "lo stedu be mi" instead of "le stedu
> > > be mi" 
> > 
> > As you know, if I am guided by meaning rather than usage then 
> > "le stedu be mi", "each of (a) certain head(s) of mine", also
> > implies you have more than one head, else why the need for universal
> > quantification, and why the need for specificity -- that is, why
> > the need to invoke a particular le'i stedu be mi, when you are
> > in fact talking about the membership of lo'i stedu be mi?
> 
> I disagree. o-gadri are out, regardless of the membership of lo'i
> stedu be mi, because I am talking about a specific thing. 

Certainly if you intend to refer to a +specific thing, i.e. something
involving le'i, then o-gadri are out. But one can speak of someone's
head without referring to it.

> lei makes
> no sense, because it implies there is more than one, 

As you know, I think the implication that there is more than one is
either less with lei than with le, or else equal.

> and furthermore
> that collectively it can be (conceptually) infinitely subdivided 
> le'i refers to something other than the head. le'e is obviously
> wrong, and implies that there is more than one head. 

le'e is definitely not wrong, since it refers to a single head,
or, if you prefer, *the* single head. Some but not all opinions
on the generic gadri (but not the Prototype view) imply that the 
membership is nonsingleton, but I can't see how the implication
would be stronger than with other gadri.

> "le" is the correct gadri 

None of the gadri are incorrect. It is a matter of which one has
the least unfortunate implications. I won't repeat all the arguments
all over again, because they're in earlier messages and on the wiki.
Personally, for {stedu be mi} I would use {loi'e}, or {lo'e} if
that is equivalent to {loi'e}.

> That it uses universal quantification doesn't mean anything. It's
> all behind the scenes. Explicitly saying "ro le" probably *would*
> imply that I had more than one head, but that's not what we are
> talking about 

If you are making a distinction between {le} and {ro le}, which
is certainly a Gricean thing to do, then we are going beyond the
question of what the gadri meanings implicate and taking into
account how they are expressed phonologically. That is a perfectly
licit thing to do, but I am confining my observations to exclude
consideration about how the meanings are expressed phonologically.

> > Presumably you do agree that "da stedu mi", "something is my
> > head", is also more natural than "ko'a stedu mi", "le du cu
> > stedu mi", "it is my head" 
> 
> Sure. I don't understand why you say this though 

I was just confirming that you didn't intend to argue that all
talk about someone's head had to be done by +specific referential
sumti.

--And.