Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 9:48 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Also the distinction should pertain to "lo broda poi/noi" too.
> "lo broda poi brode cu brodi" = "lo ge broda gi brode cu brodi"; "lo broda
> noi brode cu brodi" = (roughly) "lo broda cu ge brode gi brodi".

"lo ge broda gi brode" is ungrammatical. "lo gu'e broda gu'i broda" is
grammatical but it's a tanru, which opens a different can of worms.

We can do "zo'e noi ke'a ge broda gi brode cu brodi", but then the
distinction between "poi" and "noi" just disappears, as "lo broda poi
brode cu brodi" and "lo broda noi brode cu brodi" end up with the same
expansion, through different routes (thanks to the associativity of
"ge").

"ro da poi broda" and "su'o da poi broda" have different expansions:

  ro da poi broda cu brode -> ro da zo'u ganai da broda gi da brode

  su'o da poi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi da brode

and it is not easy for me to decide whether "zo'e poi broda" should
pattern with one or the other (or neither). If you are thinking of
"zo'e" as a pre-illocutionary "su'o da", then I suppose you end up
with:

  zo'e poi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi
[illocutionary:] da brode

But then so is:

  zo'e noi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi
[illocutionary:] da brode

Something seems amiss there.

> In your wine example, the
> version with "it" is consistent with all three interpretations (generic,
> specific, existential).
>
> I can see how a linguistic construction can be semantically ambiguous
> between these interpretations, but not how the interpretations can be
> conflated into one.

Well, I can conflate the generic and specific interpretations into one
by invoking Mr Wine (which drives pc crazy): When Mr Wine does
something in a  particular occasion, like being drank by me, then I
can shift the specificity from being focused on the wine to just apply
to the occasion and blur the two views. (Maybe we could call this the
referential interpretation.)

This is somewhat similar to saying that John was a once baby and now
has a beard. We have no problem in shifting from the John-as-a-whole
to the John-at-the-moment perspective. Granted we don't tend to think
that way about Mr Wine, and temporal occasions are not completely like
spatiotemporal occasions, and so on, but in principle I don't see a
problem from the logical side.

The existential interpretation I see as a different issue, as it is
tied to quantifiers. Maybe there's a way to conflate it too through
something like you do with the relative scope of the illocutionary
force, I'm not sure.

> Some particular broda could be the generic
> broda, you're saying. Our difference was mainly terminological.
>
> But if you think "lo broda" means "some particular broda, which may be the
> generic broda", then I see why you think you can do without e-gadri. (How to
> explicitly do generics, though?)

Is there a way to explicitly do John-as-a-whole? The only way I can
think of is by explicitly using some predicate that suggests the
as-a-whole (or the generic) view, "John the whole person", "wine the
alcoholic beverage", "bus the means of transportation". But not
through a gadri, because there isn't just one level of genericity,
there are usually many different possible levels.

> Actually, I guess the sole difference
> between o-gadri and e-gadri might then be veridicality, which, mirabile
> dictu, might actually suddenly make pre-xorlo gadri usage mean approximately
> what the writers thought they were saying.

My impression is that, for the most part, pre-xorlo gadri usage paid
no mind to the prescriptive implicit quantifiers, so all that xorlo
does is bring prescription in line with pre-existing usage, so that
gadri are referential and not quantificational.

> Maybe zo'e already is zo'e'e?
> On the one hand one can see a distinction between a reading of "I ate X"
> where X is some specific thing amd a reading where X is just whatever it was
> I ate -- the generic thing-eaten-by-me, but on the other hand one can see
> how the second reading can be treated as merely an instance of the first.

I think that's right.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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