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Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo
On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:23 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jorge Llambías, On 12/04/2010 22:57:
>> If I remember correctly, the reason I decided against "voi" was that
>> "voi" is defined as the non-veridical counterpart of "poi", and what I
>> wanted was a non-veridical counterpart of "noi".
>
> That objection had occurred to me, but it seems to me that the
> restrictive--nonrestrictive distinction isn't applicable -- that "le du ku
> noi broda" and "le du ku poi broda" don't differ in meaning.
"ko'a poi broda" means that from the set of referents of ko'a I'm only
taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
But in "le broda" there is no superset of referents that I have in
mind, such that out of those only the ones that I'm describing as
broda are selected. The only referents ever in play are those of "le
broda", not some restriction from a superset consisting of the
referents of "le du".
>> But I don't really have any clear understanding of what "zo'e'e" could
>> be used for, other than to define "le".
>
> Surely the meanings "le du", "a certain something or someone" are fairly
> obvious and useful. If "lo du" = "zo'e", then "le du" might equally well
> have a KOhA counterpart.
Hmm... yes, I see. Assuming "le" is useful, there should be a KOhA
that is to "le" as "zo'e" is to "lo", yes.
> Furthermore, the syntax of "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a
> broda" more closely matches the structure of the semantics.
Yes, I agree with that, "noi mi ke'a do skicu" is something of a kludge.
(BTW, "lo gunma be lo" for "loi" is also something of a kludge, for a
different reason, but at this point close enough for government work.)
>> My current, tentative,
>> understanding is that specificity is mostly a matter of degree rather
>> than an on/off thing, so not really something that needs its own
>> gadri, and I'm experimenting with using "lo" as the only gadri.
>
> Have you written up your tentative understanding? Or could you explain it?
Well, maybe degree is not quite what I meant. What I'm trying to say
(still very tentatively) is that specificity is a matter of
perspective, depending on the level of abstraction one chooses to use
in the analysis.
Consider "They came by bus." If we analyse it from a perspective where
the universe of discourse contains {bus, train, car, bicycle}, then
"bus" is specific, we are saying "they came by x" where x is a
constant with a perfectly identified individual referent in the
universe of discurse. If we analyse it from a perspective where the
universe of discourse contains {the 21 bus, the 33 bus, the 60 bus,
the 69 bus}, all of which are buses, then "bus" is non-specific, we
are saying "Ex, x is a bus: they came by x". But it's hard to say that
we are dealing with two different meanings, to me they are just two
perspectives on the same meaning, unless there are contextual reasons
to prefer one universe of discourse over the other. And "the 21 bus"
is also not a rock bottom individual, since it two can be seen from
two perspectives, and this concretizing can go on indefinitely.
(pc will probably want to argue that there is an objective rock
bottom, but let's stay away from that putative rock bottom for the
moment so that we have the two perspectives easily available.)
My (tentative) contention is that this double perspective is always
available, and if that's the case then deciding whether a given term
is specific or not is arbitrary (and the decision need not be made).
"le" could be an indication to take the specific perspective, while
"lo" remains non-commital. The non-specific perspective is achieved by
forcing an explicit quantifier.
> My view of specificity is that it involves existential quantification
> outside the scope of the sentence's illocutionary force (which IMO is what
> 'conventional implicatures' are -- stuff in the logical form but outside the
> scope of illocutionary force). E.g. "A (certain) child laughed", "le verba
> cu cmila" mean "Ex, x is a child: I-hereby-state-that x laughed", so what is
> asserted is "x laughed", in which, taken in isolation, x looks like a
> constant that is not identified. So to me, specificity is on/off rather than
> scalar.
I think you're looking at yet another dimension in which specific is
different from non-specific than the one I was considering. You are
looking at where the quantifier is with respect to illocutionary
force, and I'm looking at where the quantifier is with respect to
fixing the level of abstraction. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating, I
don't feel like I have any firm grasp on specificity yet.)
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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