Re: [jboske] kau

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Jordan DeLong scripsit:

> I disagree. o-gadri are out, regardless of the membership of lo'i
> stedu be mi, because I am talking about a specific thing.

It's not whether the thing is specific, but whether your reference to it
is specific: that is, whether I need to ask you to be sure what the referent is.

> lei makes
> no sense, because it implies there is more than one, and furthermore
> that collectively it can be (conceptually) infinitely subdivided.

"lei mi stedu" is fine, if a bit Chinese.

> 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.

Only in a Gricean sense.

-- 
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.reutershealth.com
"Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have
to do will be to send me a telegram asking and it will be done."
"Mr. Hearst, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do
anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery."