Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality

[Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

I'm running behind (as usual) and muchh of this may have been answered.

Dylan:
>This sounds good, although I'm still not sure {lo} must necessarily be
>verdical.  In some cases information must be inferred in the use of
>{lo}, as in your use of {lo cnino} I pointed out (unless that was a
>misuse); why not the meaning of the description?

lo must necessarily be veridical, by definition, as I explained at
length.  Call it dogma.  The recent discussion seems to be that when you
use lo in a way that seems non-veridical - you are merely creating a
restricted universe of discourse in which it is veridical.  Thus "lo
{unicorn}" is veridical and invokes a universe of discourse where
unicorns exist.  I presume that a statement about "lo ci nanmu" refers
to a universe of discourse which has an unspecified restriction from the
real universe - a restriction such that there are only 3 things that
really are men in it.  But "lo ci nanmu" DOES refer to men and "lo ci
nanmu cu ninmu" (or more properly "lo ci nanmu cu na nanmu") is AND MUST
BE false.  Whereas "le ci nanmu cu ninmu" or "le ci nanmu cu na nanmu"
need not be false.

> > > I'm not sure we should be so hasty.  {lo broda} can be glossed {da poi
> > > broda}.  Can {le broda} similarly be glossed {ko'a poi broda} (or
> > > perhaps {by poi broda})?
> >
> > Rather {by voi broda}, or {ro da voi broda}.
>
>{voi} must have been added since the "Places" paper was written.  Is
>there more to its use than just the one-sentence description in the
>cmavo list?
>
>In any case, {ro da voi broda} seems odd.  There's explicitly a
>quantifier there.  Does the {voi} cancel it in some way?

voi was added solely to allow for non-veridical restriction:  "da voi
nanmu".  There is an x that I describe to be a man.  It was added for
logical completeness and not because it is especially useful.  The fact
that you can use a "voi" clause attached to a "lo" or a "le" description
is simply another side effect of including its parallelism to poi/noi in
other grammatical contexts.  It is possible that they may mean nothing,
or more likely that what they mean is something no one would want to say
because there are so many easier and clearer ways to say it.  Since it
was added as an extra cmavo in an existing selma'o, not much thought was
given to nuance of semantics - only actual changes to the YACC grammar
were subject to extremely careful analysis prior to the cmavo list
baselining.  (Now of course everything is trial-baselined for the
dictionary and we are trying mightily to make only changes that are
really useful, and then only if they offer no impact to the much-lagging
dictionary work.  Every one of these ever-lagging 'critical issues' is
one more distraction (read 'excuse') to further delay the dictionary).

>> It is in 99% of the cases. But you are still allowed to use
>> {le broda} to refer to somthing that is not even remotely a broda,
>> as long as context makes it clear what you're talking about.
>
>What's an example of when you'd want to do this?  That is, can you think
>of a context in which {le broda cu broda} isn't true in any sense
>whatsoever?  That would seem extremely strange to me.

This is a classic of the Loglan project.

le nanmu cu ninmu
That man over there is really a woman

(That man whom we have been describing turns out to really be a woman).

(i.e. you have been presuming that she was a man perhaps because her
clothes and hair make her appear masculine, but I know better).

>Hmm, I need to ponder this more.  There seem to be two uses of {poi}
>involved: subselection and definition (as with {da}).
>
><ponder>
>
>OK, I think I understand now.  {poi} means subselection,

Yes - always.  It can be definitional, but the way it defines (as in "da
poi" is by restriction (the preferred term to 'subselection') of the
universe of discourse to that subset that meets the selected place of
the restrictive clause.

> while {noi},
>by providing more information, means definition (in an appropriate
>context, e.g., {da noi li'o} if {da} is going to be used again).  But
>if the variable {da} is not used again, the two are equivalent.

No.  "noi" always *merely* provides additional information.  The
information is incidental and could always be left out of the sentence
entirely without changing the meaning.  Instead it could be stated as a
separate sentence on the same logical level. e.g. da noi broda cu nanmu
= da cu nanmu .ije da cu broda, with the added metalinguistic status
that the broda claim is subordinate and incidental to the main line of
thought.

The comparables in American English (British can be different):

John, the teacher, is sitting next to John, the bartender.

(poi - here the clauses are distinguishing which John is which)

John, who BTW I saw at the store yesterday, is sitting over there.

(noi - you presumably know which John I am talking about, and the info
about my seeing him is irrelevant to identifying him or to the claim of
his sitting - thus the latter is logically equivalent to "John is
sitting over there, and I saw John at the store yesterday."

>So the equivalent of {le broda goi ko'a} might be {ko'a noi le broda},
>at least if {ko'a} is not already in use.

There is no intended equivalence between goi and noi/poi.  "goi" is a
metalinguistic device to define one undefined sumti (presumably shorter)
as being metalinguistically a reference to the other (presumably longer
or more complicated grammatically).  "cei" does the same for two selbri.
One could erroneously say that "goi" means "poi du", but really it means
"sei du".  We have also said that usage is flexible between having the
definition on the left or on the right depending on stylistics.

>So what does {voi} mean?  What's an example of its use?

Per above, voi is a way to accomplish the intensional aspects of "le"
i.e. not making a claim about ke'a (in da voi ke'a broda), but merely
referencing a description of convenience.  Most usages of "lo broda"
which are not carefully restricted should properly be "da voi broda" and
not "da poi broda" which implies that "ke'a broda" is a complete and
true statement of all info needed to restrict the universe of discourse
to the intended meaning of "da".

If I say "mi nitcu lo tanxe" I am implying that any box will suffice,
from a ring-box to a refrigerator-box.  If I say "mi nitcu le tanxe" I
am implying a specific in-mind box (which may not truthfully fit the
predicate ke'a tanxe).  If I say "mi nitcu da voi tanxe" I am getting
something half-way in between - I don't think it is necessarily a
specific box, but the restriction is certainly specific and in-mind and
not necessarily veridical.  (Does this solve that bloody "any" problem?)

lojbab