* Friday, 2011-08-26 at 19:15 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >
> > But wouldn't you agree that the domain of discourse should be mostly
> > static?
>
> I think it needs to be mostly dynamic. (Don't ask me for a full theory
> of dynamic how, but I think the static assumption only works for
> interpreting small chunks of language at a time.)
Oh. But then is a model-theoretic formal semantics of any use at all?
> > So we can't solve the problem of {ci da panzi mi} by just
> > declaring that such a statement indicates that the Kind {lo'e panzi mi}
> > probably isn't in the domain of discourse, because it wouldn't be at all
> > remarkable for {lo'e panzi mi} to be explicitly talked about in a nearby
> > or even the same sentence.
>
> With a strictly fixed domain that would be hard to do, I agree.
>
>
> >> I'm not sure it's such a good idea to think of kinds as being made of
> >> something.
> >
> > Well... they come from unary predicates (no?), and sometimes those are
> > true of only one thing. e.g. {lo'e me mi}, maybe.
>
> Unless you want to say things like "I am no longer who I was ten years
> ago", or "I am not the same person when I'm on vacation". Sometimes
> you can do that just with tense, or you can say it's metaphorical, but
> a metaphorical interpretation is still an interpretation.
I would have thought that even if "the person I am when on vacation"
made it into the domain of discourse, it wouldn't satisfy {me mi}. But
that's just a question of what {mi} means.
> >> >> and "poets write some poems, but most poems are written by non-poets"?
> >> >
> >> > I don't think 'poets' is a generic there, any more than 'non-poets' is.
> >>
> >> Carlson would disagree. (Or rather,I think he would say that bare
> >> plurals are always the same thing, I'm not sure he would call it a
> >> generic.)
> >
> > Hmm. I think he would call 'poets' and 'non-poets' indefinite plurals,
> > and analyse them as existentially quantified
> > instances/realisations/stages of the corresponding Kinds (as in section
> > 4.2 of the paper you reffed).
>
> Read again the paragraph beginning "But here I seem to be arguing the
> contrary of what I have argued for at length a bit earlier [...] the
> remainder of this work is devoted to the resolution of this
> contradictory state of affairs." The resolution is that the
> existential quantifier ends up being buried within the predicate, not
> in the bare plural term. The predicate "... writes some poems" becomes
> something like "/xEy[R(x,y)&writes-some-poems(y)", while "poets"
> translates as "/PP(p)".
>
> And this works because, as Carlson points out, bare plurals are never
> actually ambiguous as to what reading they should be given. The
> predicate normally selects for which reading is the one called for,
> and when it doesn't it's because the predicate itself is ambiguous, as
> can be shown with the same predicate acting on non-bare plural
> arguments.
Yes, but you don't want this to translate directly to Lojban, do you?
E.g. 'poets' couldn't be {lo'e pemfinti} in the above, could it?
Or if you don't believe in {lo'e}, make the question: could {lo gerku cu
cmalu gi'e xagji} be translated as "dogs are small and some dogs are
hungry"?
> >> but for "lo broda lo brodi cu
> >> brodu", just the same as for any other "ko'a ko'e broda". I just don't
> >> think that "lo broda" fixes by itself any level of abstraction.
> >
> > So you think we should just consider it as another part of the ineffable
> > and irreducible semantics of brodu?
>
> It doesn't have to be ineffable and irreducible, but yes, I think it
> makes more sense to shift the focus of the analysis there.
If it isn't irreducible, could you indicate at all how you'd do that
analysis?
> > Meanwhile, one last translation question: do you have a way of rendering
> > "humans have two legs" in your lojban, using the Kind 'humans' but
> > without using anything like the {ckaji lo ka...} trick?
>
> I would say: "lo remna cu se tuple re da".
You... would? Even though you'd have it being equivalent to
{re da zo'u lo remna cu tuple da}? What are the two solutions for {da}?
Martin
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