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Re: [lojban] non-clausal ke'a
The other possibility, which also has some support in logic (or at least
discourse analysis) would be that 'ri' picks up 'le su'o lo plise' or some such
construction, which does not actually occur but refers to the right things,
i.e., the apples on the table in this case.
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, November 20, 2010 8:52:34 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] non-clausal ke'a
On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 10:44 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> What could this mean:
>
> [.i] mi ke'a citka
>
> I suppose it's syntactically valid. But what relativised sumti could
> it refer to? Would it make more sense if it followed another sentence:
>
> mi viska lo plise .i mi ke'a citka
>
> Could we say that this {mi ke'a citka} is a sentential expansion of a
> clause that could describe {lo plise}, as in this:
>
> mi viska lo plise poi mi ke'a citka
I don't like overloading "ke'a" like that, because the two
interpretations of "ke'a" could come into conflict:
mi pensi da poi ge ke'a cpana lo jubme gi mi ke'a ba citka
Does that mean that I will be eating the table, or thinking about
what's on the table and will be eating that?
> I'm asking this as I've been thinking about the difference between
> "le/la/les" and "en" in French:
>
> Je vois une pomme. Je la mange.
> (I see an apple. I eat it.)
> mi viska pa plise .i mi ri citka
>
> Je vois des pommes. Je les mange.
> (I see apples. I eat them.)
> mi viska su'o plise .i mi ri citka
>
> Je vois des pommes. J'en mange.
> (I see apples. I eat "of them".)
> mi viska su'o plise .i mi ___ citka
>
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/en#French
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_personal_pronouns#The_pronoun_en
>
> Would {ri/ra/ru} alone be an accurate translation of "en", which
> differs from "le/la/les" in the referent's quantity (i.e. whereas "Je
> la mange." means that the whole of the object is eaten, "J'en mange."
> doesn't imply such an entirety)? My guess is that {su'o ri}, that is
> {su'o su'o plise}, would be more accurate than a bare {ri}. But I also
> vaguely feel that "en" might have something to do more with
> relativising "ke'a" than with back-counting "ri/ra/ru" (or the lerfu
> solution, for that matter -- "py" in this case).
This is the usual problem of mixing pro-sumti with quantifiers. A
quantifier has a scope, and when you use a pro-sumti to pick something
bound by a quantifier from outside the scope of the quantifier,
trouble follows. This is called a "donkey pronoun", and to find out
why you can start by reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_pronoun
To see this more clearly, expand the "su'o plise" to a properly formed
logical expression:
[su'o da poi plise zo'u (mi viska da)] .i mi citka ri
"ri" is outside the scope of "su'o", and yet it points to the bound
variable "da". What can that possibly mean? From a strictly logical
point of view, it is nonsense, a bound variable doesn't have a
referent that "ri" could pick from it. The bound variable is just a
place holder for all the things in the domain of quantification, in
this case all the apples.
In this particular case, you may say that it's obvious that "ri"
should pick just those members of the domain of quantificationj that
make "mi viska da" true, but if the context is slightly more complex,
this won't always work.
My own opinion is that in "mi viska su'o lo plise .i mi citka ri",
"ri" points to "lo plise", not to "su'o lo plise" which is not
logically well defined.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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