[lojban] Re: xorlo & mi nitcu lo mikce

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@v21.me.uk>]

[Ought I to be sending this to wikidiscuss-list@lojban.org? I
haven't yet got my head around where to post emails with
technical content.]

xorxes:
> --- And Rosta wrote:
> > IIUC, "mi nitcu lo mikce" will have a meaning that 
> > generalizes over the two more particular readings "I need 
> > a doctor" can have (viz "There's a doctor who I need"
> > vs. "I need a doctor, any doctor, (tho there may be
> > no such doctor)". 
> 
> "There is at least one doctor such that I need that doctor"
> would be {mi nitcu su'o lo mikce} or equivalently
> {su'o da poi mikce zo'u mi nitcu da}. 
> 
> {mi nitcu lo mikce} is not a "there is" claim any more than 
> {la djan cu dansu} is a "there is" claim. It's not a claim
> about what there is but rather a claim that the referent
> of {mi} is in a certain relationship with the referent of
> {lo mikce}. 

Okay; I see this. 

> >(And likewise for "mi nitcu re mikce".)
> 
> "mi nitcu re mikce" says that among the things that are doctors
> there are exactly two, no more and no less, that I need. This
> may be true for example if I need Dr Jones and Dr Smith and no
> other doctor, or if I need a cardiologist and an oncologist and
> no other doctor. It depends on what counts as a doctor in the 
> context. 

Okay. This is what I had understood.
 
> > Is there a straightforward way of expressing each of 
> > the two readings distinctly?
> 
> In the case of {re mikce}, we could say {mi nitcu re klesi be 
> lo mikce} vs {mi nitcu re prenu poi mikce}, for example, to 
> distinguish two kinds of doctor from two persons who are doctors. 

Okay.

> If what you need is a doctor pair for some reason (irrespective
> of specialities), then {mi nitcu lo re mikce} would be the way
> to say it.

Okay again. But let me reask my question, because it hasn't been
answered yet. "PA broda" can apply to PA subkinds of Brodakind
or to PA things that are classified as having the property of
being broda. -- Xorlo generalizes over that dichotomy, which is
fair enough, but since it is a distinction that underlies the
two nonspecific readings of "I need a doctor", it would be
nice to have a way of making the distinction if one wanted to.
That is, given "mi nitcu re mikce", it would be nice to 
have a way of signalling whether the truth-conditions of
the sentence are to involve checking through the subkinds of
Mr Doctor (& seeing whether I need exactly two of them) or,
on the other hand, checking through the things in the material
world that are classified as having the property of doctorhood
(& seeing whether I need exactly two of them).

I'm not saying that this is something the BPFK gadri proposals
should have covered; but I find it hard to imagine how
the distinction could be marked other than by gadri and,
obviously, the matter occurs to me because in ancestral
versions of xorlo the distinction was made.

--And.


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