Re: TECH: Transparence / Opaqueness

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

mi cusku di'e

> > It doesn't work. For most predicates, the "opaque" claim is
> > pretty useless.

i la veion di'e spusku

>   I disagree.
>
>   If we consider those types of sentences where we have had
>   difficulties with quantification/transparency/opaqueness,
>   i.e. those involving {nitcu} & Co., and sentences like
>
>             mi pu'o catra ci le xa cinfo
>             I'm going to kill 3 of the 6 lions

This one could possibly be opaque, because (suppose that one of the
lions is named Clarence) then {mi pu'o catra la klarens} need not have
a truth value, i.e. it really could be any three of the six.

Using {xe'e}, that case would be {mi pu'o catra ci xe'e le xa cinfo}

On the other hand, you could be making a transparent claim, about three
of the lions. This is what the sentence means to me: Exactly three of
the following claims are true

        mi pu'o catra la klarens
        mi pu'u catra la simbas
        mi pu'o catra la leos
        mi pu'o catra la cinf
        mi pu'o catra la king
        mi pu'o catra la ritc

In the transparent case, three of those statements are true, and three
are false, even though you don't give any clue as to which are true
and which false.

In the opaque case (which I'd like to mark with xe'e) none of the
statements is true or false.

(If you had used {ba} it would definitely be transparent, because
the opaque makes no sense. {mi ba catra la klarens} is always either
true or false. We just wait until {mi} or {la klarens} is dead, and
examine what happened.)

>             ko dunda ci plise mi
>             Give me 3 apples!

Imperatives by definition are neither true nor false in Lojban. That
means: make {do dunda ci plise mi} true. Since the distinction between
opaque and transparent rests on how the truth value of the statement
is determined, no such distinction is possible for imperatives.


>   we ought to observe that they have one feature in common:
>
>       the outcome of the sampling is not known at
>       the moment of utterance and we can draw only
>       a limited set of conclusions from the facts
>       given

What sampling? There's no sampling to be done in the case of the apples.
Besides, the determination of the truth value is outside of time. You
are allowed to see all time to decide.

>   We have a kind of linguistic Schroedinger's Cat which is
>   simultaneously alive and dead until the outcome of the
>   experiment is observed - until then we have opaqueness.

The truth value of an utterance of a sentence is time independent.
Do you agree? And using the word 'opaque' in its general meaning,
rather than the restricted technical one, only makes matters more
opaque :)

>   The basic Lojban sentence is timeless (even with the
>   simple tenses pu/ca/ba), and if I say
>
>            mi citka re le pano plise
>            I eat two of the ten apples
>
>   the {re le pano plise} are in limbo until I can say
>
>            mi ba'o citka le re le pano plise
>
>   at which time the two are fixed, definite, transparent -
>   until then there is just a kind of Poisson distribution
>   of the possible outcome of the sampling, things are not
>   sharply in focus but behind an opaque window.

You are talking about tenses. The opaque/transparent issue is
orthogonal to that, in my opinion.

>   Even though I have had but a single mother, I can say
>
>           re lo remna cu mamta mi
>
>   given the definition of {mamta} and the nature of the
>   Lojban tense system. Until I'm dead, and it can be
>   definitely said that no second remna turned out to
>   mother me, this statement holds opaquely.

The statement is transparent in Quine's terminology. I agree that
its truth value may be hard to determine, but that is a different
matter. Are you making the same transparent/opaque distinction
that Quine makes e.g. between lion-hunt and man-hunt?

Jorge