Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

> {ga'inai loi satcyselsku zo'u stidi}
> [The attitudinal paper mentions {galtu} w.r.t ga'i, which seems
> malglico.  {tolbanli}, maybe?]

Many of the etymologies of UIs are malglico. The best thing
is to ignore them.

> [I'd like to stick in a tense for "prematurely", but I couldn't find
> one.  Why isn't there a distinction: natural beginning vs. real
> beginning?]

That would be the symmetric of {za'o}. I don't know the reason why
we don't have it, I think it would be useful. In would correspond
to one sense of "already", which I never know how to translate, just
as {za'o} gives one sense of "still".

[...]
> So I'd like to see some justification for why the verdical/non-verdial
> distinction must be made with every reference to {le/lo toldi}.

You won't see it from me. In my opinion, the veridicality question
is rather secondary.

{le toldi} is "each of the butterflies in question", normally I would
say "the butterfly in question", but it could be more than one. If it
happens not to be really a butterfly, it doesn't matter that much,
because the specificity should make clear what is the referent.

On the other hand {lo toldi} is "at least one of the things that are
butterflies", with no way of knowing which one. Then it makes sense
to expect that you are talking about real butterflies, since that is
the only restriction you are imposing.

But the important difference is that one refers to one ore many
specific butterflies, and the other just to "some butterfly".

> Other
> distinctions make sense: the difference indivual/mass/set/ideal affects
> the semantics of the rest of the sentence (though I don't understand the
> difference between mass and set yet),

Sets are rather useless in normal conversation (sez I). Sets are only
mathematical objects, they can't run, talk, love, carry pianos and
many other fun things that individuals and masses can do. They can do
very limited things, like have elements and cardinality, and intersect
each other, but not much more.

> and it's clearly necessary to make
> the distinction between quantified (existential) and specific references.

Right, that one is crucial in a logical language.

> But I don't see why +/-verdical distinction has to be there when it can
> just as easily be made with a cnima'o following the brivla.

Do as I do and ignore it.  :)

> If this has been discussed before, my apologies.

Lots and lots of times, but we never end up agreeing so we can discuss
it again.

> c'o mi'e. dilyn.

co'o mi'e xorxes