Intensions: W

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

OK, now I'm finally reading up on intensions, I am becoming very dangerous. :-)

There is an ambigiuty in the English phrase

The president of the U.S. will always be a Republican.

1. If 'the president' refers to its extension (the guy currently 
holding the office, W), then this is merely saying that W will always 
be a Republican. Not a startling claim.

2. If 'the president' refers to the intension (whosoever the 
officeholder shall be at any particular time, as a function mapping 
time and world to any individual holding the office), that means 
there will never be a Dem prez.

You can distinguish between them with tense logic; for H = 'will 
always be the case',

1. Ax: Prez(x) => H(GOP(x))
2. H(Ax: Prez(x) => GOP(x))

You can distinguish between them with intensions; for ^x = the 
intension of x (the prez in general, as distinct from any individual 
prez; the function mapping times to individual prez's):

1. Prez(x) => GOP(x)
2. Prez(^x) => GOP(^x)

... So which of the two does

lo merjatna baroroi prenrnrepubikana

mean? Both? The latter?

Obviously we can disambiguate sense 1 as {lo nau merjatna}. I presume 
sense 2 is: {ro da poi temci zo'u: lo merjatna be ca da}? Is it also 
{ro jaika ce'u merjatna} (which is properly {ro jaika ce'u merjatna 
de'i ce'u}, and indeed {ro jaika ce'u merjatna ma'i ce'u})? Is it {lo 
ka'e merjatna}?

Sorry guys, I'm only catching up to this stuff now...

--
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* Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies nickn@unimelb.edu.au *
University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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