referential anaphors with apparently referentless antecedents (was: RE: kau

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

xod:
> On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, And Rosta wrote:
> > xod:
> > > When you say "I have a son", you're not referring to your own son?
> >
> > No. I'm not being bloody-minded or counterintuitive here, either 
> >
> > "I am a father" = "I have a child" = "mi patfu da" = "na ku mi patfu no da"
> >
> > These just say that there is something/someone that is my child,
> > or, equivalently, that it is untrue that there is nothing/noone that
> > is my child 
> 
> This must therefore be somewhat meaningless:
> 
> "I have a son. He's nine."

Spoken like a true jboskeist! It isn't meaningless, of course, and
the explanation is that the antecedent of "he" is not "a son" or its 
nonexistent referent. Rather, the first sentence evokes a scenario 
containing me and my son, and "he" refers to my son in that scenario.

Compare "Nobody in London drives a truck: there wouldn't be room
for it (= the truck)", "He has no female friends; they (the friends)
wouldn't be able to tolerate his chauvinism". In these exx there
is no truck or female friend; but the initial clauses evoke a
scenario containing a track and female friends, and these can
be referred to in a later clause.

It is debatable whether Lojban can do this. My view is that it
can, if "it" and "they" were expressed by {ko'a} or {le du} or 
{lo'e co'e} or suchlike, NOT by {ri}. I don't know whether lerfu
sumti would be allowable; I don't know how much glorking they
allow.

--And.