In a message dated 10/3/2001 11:20:09 AM Central Daylight Time, arosta@uclan.ac.uk writes:
If it is in the nature offunctionhood that for every x there is at most one f of x Well, I suppose that {mamta} does not mean just biological mother and in that sense it was a bad choice, although I was using it consistently in that sense and thus the uniqueness condition held. I probably should have used a compound, but, of course, I was taking off from an earlier case (where, come to think of it, the uniqueness condition was not needed, though only Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinto were ever mentioned as relevvant figures). <I would not be saying this, if Lojban had a way to use {mamta} as an applied function rather than only as a predicate. E.g. if *{mamta la djan} functioned as a sumti that referred to the mother of John. That seems to be how you conceive of {le mamta be la djan}, but really that means "x is such that it is nonveridically said to be the case that x mamta la djan", where xis not bound by a quantifier.> Well, as you are wont to say, that *is* how Lojban uses {mamta} as an applied function. That role may not follow strictly from the literal meaning of the terms but it is a role that the _expression_ plays -- look at aclear case like {le sumji be le re li mu}. (I would argue that "is non-veridically said to be" is suspect loading, "that the speaker is using" is safer, for the speaker may use it just because it is the veridical thing to say -- and usually does, byt the way). <#> In my view {makau} stands for the value that the relationshipgives #> when the ce'u place is filled. {makau} will take a value from x3 #> for each value taken from x2 and placed in {ce'u}. #Ahah! I have accused you of that view several times and you have almost as #often denied it, swearing that you believed that the answer to a question was #a proposition not a thing. Now, to make a point you will go back toyour #true view. OK. I'd be steaming if you'd written that to me! Jorge does believe, contrary to your accusations, that the answer to a question is a proposition not a thing. He does not say anything in the quoted passage that contradicts this. He says that (loosely) {ma kau} stands for a thing. #But notice that will make {la djan djuno le du'u makau mamta #la bil) into perfect nonsense (of a highly forbidden kind: we can't use #{djuno} for people).> xorxes does a perfectly fine job of defending himself, so I'll safe comments for him. Note, by the way, that I did offer him this psoition, which he constantly hovers about and which is prima facie plausible, as an option to one that was even prima facie false. <#Ah, but maybe what you mean is that somehow it is built into the operation of #indirect questions that they generate the proposition with the right critter #in for the {kau}. But then, of course, it is impossible to get the answer #wrong, which, alas, goes against our experience: {mi jinvi le du'u maku mamta #la bil} guarantees I get it right (so only essay questions from nowon). A good objection, which, it seems to me, applies to any variety of the set of answers analysis.> Only if the set has to be correct answers. It does not -- and ought not be, for just this reason, as Harrah et. al. showed back in the early60's. <I don't know what Jorge will say, but I'd suggest that maybe {du'u ma kau} gives the set of all answers (including false ones), but that the semantics of {djuno} means that any answer that is se djuno is perforce true. I'mnot sure how that fits with {mi jinvi le du'u ma kau pendo la bil}, but then I'm not clear about exactly what that is supposed to mean.> Exactly. "I have this opinion as to who are friends of Bill," is about as close as you can come in English. <I think it would be very helpful to use Sum rather than Mamta as anexample> Probably true, but the choice was in response to a particular situation. |