| In a message dated 5/25/2001 5:59:12 PM Central Daylight Time,
rob@twcny.rr.com writes: I have no idea what "gavaggai" means, and how does naming this bizarre Sorry! I lose track of where everyone is in pursuing these issues. The story (from Malinowski through Quine) is that Trobriand Islanders see all rabbits (for examples) as being one super rabbit (the sense of "Mr.", I suppose, more physical than Plato's rabbit-its-own-self), who is totally present wherever a rabbit is and so does all that any rabbit does -- as we would put it. But our putting it that way misses what the Trobriander means when he says (I don't know whether this is authentic) "gavagai" which is not "There goes a rabbit" but "Lo, Mr. Rabbit." And that Mr. Rabbit is one of the things that {loi ractu} means. Or, as I would want to say, is one of the metaphors to explain how {loi ractu} works. If it doesn't help, I have some more. > A third part is the disambiguation of sentences like "Chicagoans drink The sentence is at least three ways ambiguous: Each C drinks more than each NY, the typical C drinks more than the typical NY (and that could be two, depending on which of the two readings of {le'e} you go with), or the Cs altogether drink moe than the NY altogether. The last is {loi}. |