Re: Anselmisms and gadro

[mark@kli.org]

>From: A Rosta <a.rosta@uclan.ac.uk>
>Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 14:23:00 +0100
>
>From: A Rosta <a.rosta@uclan.ac.uk>
>
>> This is the age-old chestnut of Lojban's habit of conflating
>> non-veridicality with specificity.  There's not much I can do about
>that.
>>
>> ~mark
>
>If you don't mind doing without gadri -- and they are
>superfluous -- then disconflation is easy.
>
>veridical & nonspecific:     da poi    [= lo]
>veridical & specific:        ko'a poi
>nonveridical & specific:     ko'a voi  [= le]
>
>More generally, {da} (& co.) gives you nonspecifics, {ko'a}
>(& co.) gives you specifics, and {voi} gives you the means to
>make nonveridical descriptions.

But {ko'a} isn't specific in the same way "the" is.  {ko'a} is a bound
pronoun, referring to something in particular that must have been defined
already.  "The book" (one which I have in mind, as opposed to just any old
book) is not a "ko'a" yet; I haven't defined it with enough detail and I
haven't bound it to the variable.  And while I can see that it could be
argued that since it's one I have in mind, it's covered by {le}, I still
feel there's some difference.  I know that {bi'u} was introduced to help
answer this problem partly.

~mark