[lojban-beginners] Fwd: Re: alice questions

[Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com>]

For some reason, my posts to this list are getting eaten. This is the
second post that I've had to remail.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 17, 2005 1:52 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: alice questions
To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org


On 8/17/05, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/17/05, Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, what I was getting at was, why is the {se} necessary, and why
> > doesn't it change the meaning to "pink body with eyes"?
> Wouldn't {poi
> > xunblabi kanla} mean "pink eyed" or "with pink eyes"?
>
> {lo blabi ractu poi xunblabi kanla ke'a} would mean that.
> But when {ke'a} is not explicit, the most common
> interpretation is that it fills the first empty slot, so my
> first take on {lo blabi ractu poi xunblabi kanla} might
> be "a white rabbit which is a pink eye", i.e.
> {lo blabi ractu poi ke'a xunblabi kanla}.
>
> The intent was {lo blabi ractu poi [ke'a] xunblabi se kanla}.

Ah, yes, I see now how it's important to have the x2 of kanla as the
place where ke'a goes, even implicitly. (In fact, that occurred to me
shortly after I sent the message.) And I guess that's more important
than having an obvious tanru. So here's one last question on this. Is
the tanru sense of {xunblabi kanla} and {xunblabi se kanla} the same,
vagueness and all, out of context of this bridi? Or is it the case
that the first would be preferred because the intended interpretation
is more obvious, but the second allows that interpretation as well,
and so is permissible, but less obvious? In other words, does {se
kanla} suggest (even if it doesn't compel) that {xunblabi} is talking
about the x2 of {kanla} instead of x1?

> > > I don't see a problem with {poi} here. It restricts the sense of {blabi ractu}
> > > to just those that have pink eyes.
> >
> > It feels uncomfortable to me because the restrictive sense doesn't
> > seem to be adding any information, and as a listener I would wonder
> > whether I were missing some subtlety that required the {poi} to
> > communicate something.
>
> {poi} would be strange if we already had {lo blabi ractu}
> identified, but if I remember right this is the first time it appears,
> so I don't see a problem with making the eyes part of the
> identification information. What else could it communicate?
> When would you use {poi}?

Speaking as a newbie, I would use {poi} when the additional
information would help to disambiguate the intended reference of the
restricted sumti. This might be my misunderstanding of {poi}, though.
In this case, since there's only one obvious intended reference here,
{lo ractu poi bajra zo'a la alis}, there's nothing to be
disambiguated. Taking out the poi clause takes out the information
that the referent of {lo ractu} has pink eyes. It doesn't change what
the reader sees as the referent. There is only one rabbit in the
story.

Or do you mean that {bajra zo'a la alis} isn't taken into
consideration as far as the referent of the sumti assumed in the
subordinate clause goes, but only the sumti itself? That, I can't
imagine.

> (There is also a difference between {lo broda noi brode [ku]}
> and {lo broda ku noi brode}. To use {noi} here would require
> a {ku} otherwise we would be saying that white rabbits
> have pink eyes irrespective of this white rabbit in particular.

How's that? {lo ractu} in itself doesn't mean {ro ractu}. And a {noi}
can't assign a quality to a referent that the sumti doesn't already
include itself, can it? That would just be strange. This seems to
relate to your comment just previous.

> I don't know that I want to insist on this (mis?)feature of {noi},
> but it probably influenced me at the time. See
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=BPFK+Section%3A+Subordinators>
> for more than you probably want to know.)

That's a lot to wade through, sure nuff.

Sorry if this is getting a bit OT. If you think I should read the CLL
more thoroughly and then come back, go ahead and say so. I'm willing
to admit that my confusion might go away with a more thorough
understanding of the grammar. :-)

Chris Capel
--
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)