"what i have for dinner" [resend (1)]

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

I think this didn't get through before.

> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 16:07:32 -0000
> 
> > From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>
> >
> > > > >   What I have for dinner depends on what there is in the fridge.
> > > >
> > > >   le nu mi citka roda poi mi citka ke'a cu jalge
> > > >    le nu rode poi ke'a nenri le lekmi'i cu nenri le lekmi'i
> > > >   "My eating that which I eat is a result of
> > > >    that which is in the fridge being in the fridge".
> > >
> > >I don't think this gets it. Yours (but not my original) would be
> > >true if the fridge contents' being fridge contents had, say,
> > >miraculously healed me of an inability to eat.
> >
> > I think you're right. What I would need is: "My eating that
> > which I eat, and not something else, is a result of
> > that which is in the fridge, and not something else, being
> > in the fridge".
> >
> > Would that do it?
> 
> I reckon so. Astrophysics's gain is linguistics' loss.
> 
> [I can't explain the genitives in that sentence. They just sound
> righter than the alternatives.]
> 
> > > > It seems to work for other indirect questions as well:
> > > >
> > > >    la djan djuno le du'u makau klama
> > > >    John knows who came.
> > > >
> > > >    ro da poi ke'a klama zo'u la djan djuno le du'u da klama
> > > >    For each x that came, John knows that x came.
> > >
> > >I think you need to add
> > >
> > >     ... and for each x that did not come, John knows that x
> > >           did not come
> >
> > Right, and I think I also need to add: "... and if nobody came,
> > then John knows that nobody came."
> 
> I don't see why. Ah, hang on. You're saying that "Everybody is
> such that John knows they didn't come" doesn't entail "John
> knows everybody didn't come", but that "John knows who came"
> requires there to be such an entailment. Hmm. Not necessarily:
> 
>    A: You know who came.
>    B: Do I? I don't know of anyone's having come.
>    A: That's right; nobody came.
> 
> In other words, B knows who came, but doesn't know that they
> know who came(!)
> 
> This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally
> intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating
> things here, rather than interrogativity per se.
> 
> > And I need to add something like that in the prenex version
> > of what I have for dinner, too, to cover the cases where
> > I had nothing for dinner or where there is nothing in the
> > fridge.
> >
> > Indirect questions are complicated beasts.
> 
> Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their
> semantics in the linguistics literature. 
> 
> > >> >    la djan djuno le du'u makau klama
> > >> >    John knows who came.
> > >> >
> > >> >    ro da poi ke'a klama zo'u la djan djuno le du'u da klama
> > >> >    For each x that came, John knows that x came.
> > >>
> > >>I think you need to add
> > >>
> > >>     ... and for each x that did not come, John knows that x
> > >>           did not come
> > 
> > After some more thought, I think a better rendering would
> > be: "For each x that came, and for no other x, John knows
> > that x came." This is because if Paul didn't come, but
> > John doesn't even know of Paul's existence, then saying
> > "John knows that Paul didn't come" sounds wrong. Better
> > to say that John doesn't know anything about Paul.
> > 
> > That way it also fits better with the dinner one.
> 
> So we ssem to be saying that interrogatives mean:
> 
> "for set s, such that for every x x is in s iff [whatever],
> for all?/some? y, such that y is in s,
> for all?/some? z, such that z is not in s,
> it is/being the case that y is in s and z is not in s"
> 
> This would seem to cover:
>  
>        Where you live influences *what your insurance premiums are*.
>        Your living in that neighbourhood influences *what your 
>          insurance premiums are*.
>        John knows *who came*.
> 
> -- setting aside the issue of to what extent the knower knows that he
> knows what he knows...
> 
> For *whether he came*, s is the set of truth values of "he came".
> I think.
> 
> If you agree with this, my next question is how to strip the
> repetition out of the formula.
> 
> I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> insurance premium ones above.
> 
> --And.