pc's comments on Nick's: "Monty's Unicorns, Fermat version", and a couple other issues

[Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

> From: Pycyn@aol.com
> Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 12:27:56 EST
> Subject: Re: [jboske] Monty's Unicorns, Fermat version
> To: lojbab@lojban.org
>
> Putting myself back forty years to be in a Montague class is just the sort 
> of thing I don't have time for now. In addition, I have said my piece 
> numerous times on these issues -- with no visible effect then and not 
> likely to have more now. But some thing popped into my head just reading 
> this note through, so I'll pass them on for what they are worth.
>
> On {sisku}, I note that a correction that was approved ages ago -- a 
> kludge but a useful one -- is not incorporated into the list: 1 seeks an 
> instantiation of property 2 in set 3. We've always known -- and several 
> times, I think, dealt with -- the fact that we don't look for properties 
> but for their instantiations. Along that line, I recall (not a pramana, 
> remember) that the quantifier problem was dealt with (as usual in 
> intensions) by incorporation into the intension {leka pavyseljirna 
> remei/romei}.
>
> [I've said a bunch of things about {ka} that mean that I am less than 
> happy with this reading, but they don't come up here. Well, one does: {ka 
> ce'u blanu} is a functon from individuals to colors -- whatever they are 
> -- not from worlds and times to truth values, at least no directly. The 
> latter is {du'u ce'u blanu}]
>
> The bit about a name having to have a property to be used comes from the 
> fact that names are quantifiers (this cuts the grammar size roughly in 
> half, eliminating a vast array of duplicates) and quantifiers are all 
> restricted (second order relations between sets). Taking the properties 
> to be a haeceity was a mistake I remember arguing with (probably) Gaifman 
> back when I was studying to be a Nyayika and so a believer in 
> visheshas. Even without vishesha, using this as haeceity seems to me a 
> bad idea, since it makes transworld comparisons (ctfs like "If Socrates 
> were a Seventeenth century Irish washerwoman") impossible to deal with 
> naturally.
>
> Nick's run theough the technicals of Montague look OK, but Montague is 
> easy to make plausible looking lines in that turn out to be either wrong 
> or meaningless. And getting into the set where I can check is just what I 
> can't do now.
>
> On the tense logic matter, strict tense logic would make {pu} and {ba} 
> (and {ca} for what it is worth) particular quantifiers over past and 
> future times, respectively. Thus, inside the scope of a negation they 
> would be effectively universal. We did not go that way, taking them as 
> pointing to fixed (if unidentified) times -- names rather than 
> quantifiers, if you will. Or as giving them scope even broader than 
> quantifiers. Or (I think this is the official line) as merely directions, 
> not pointal at all (but still unaffected by negations). To do universals 
> (and even explicit particulars, etc.) we use {roi} -- though I don't 
> remember whether it is {pu noroi} or {noroi pu} for "never in the past."
>
> Default quantifiers were indeed originally intended Griceanly -- and in 
> direct imitation of natural languages generally. I think that is right 
> for external quantifiers; I am less sure about internal ones, which I 
> would prefer just to have as optional. We usually want a particular part 
> of the referent -- one member or several or all -- and in most languages 
> in most contexts it is clear which without saying excplicitly. But we 
> rarely care how many there are in all (more often with {le} than {lo} 
> cases, in languages where these can be distinguished), so there is little 
> Gricean mileage to be had from default internal quantifiers.



> Back those damned unicorns. I still support the peculiar gadri (NOT any 
> of the ones in standard -- nor, so far as I had seen when I took off, 
> non-standrad [& and X] -- Lojban). As xorxes pointed out, what is 
> involved is a buried quantifier -- one in another world if we must or one 
> in what amounts to an equivalence -- though stronger than material. "I am 
> looking for a unicorn" amounts to "I am on a quest which will be completed 
> (/satisfied/relieved/...) just in case there is a unicorn I see (/capture 
> /touch/...)" The fact that the critters involved here are regularly 
> called "any one will do" shows that what is involved is purposive (do for 
> what?) and intimately involved with notions like satisfaction. I would 
> take this new gadri as an improper symbol, not translatable alone but 
> pointing to longer expression that must be translated as a whole (that is, 
> as a simple surface phenomenon from a very complex deep structure 
> involving lexical replacements as well as syntactic ones).




--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org