* Friday, 2011-09-02 at 19:17 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * 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?
>
> I'm not sure about it being of use, but it would certainly be nice to
> have a complete formal semantics for Lojban. Obviously we are nowhere
> near that.
Quite.
Fragments of it are easy enough to treat - in particular, a sizable
fragment translates directly to usual first-order predicate logic.
Pre-xorlo, {lo} was part of that fragment. I'd like to understand what
modifications to the semantics are required to handle xor{lo}.
But what I meant was that you seemed to be upsetting the very
foundations of a model-theoretic formal semantics - that we can judge
truthhood of statements against a fixed model (fixed at least
throughout a sentence, whether or not throughout the whole discourse).
I hope this isn't necessary.
> >> >> >> 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?
>
> I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "this" here.
The ambiguity being in the predicate rather than the sumti.
> My Lojban translation for "poets write some poems, but most poems are
> written by non-poets" might be something like: "lo pemfi'i cu finti
> su'o pemci .i ku'i so'e pemci cu se finti lo na'e pemfi'i"
Right. So that wouldn't work with lo giving 'the typical', nor with it
giving some individuals as a constant - so this kind of Kind really is
something new. And its semantics are only getting more and more alien to
me as you give more examples...
For a while, I thought your generics might be something like elements in
an elementary extension, i.e. that adding them doesn't change the truth
value of any sentence (or maybe: of any sentence which is short enough
and doesn't use any too high numbers (so we can add generics to large
finite sets)).
But now it seems you would want that {ro pemci cu se finti lo finti}. So
{da finti ro pemci} becomes true on adding this generic.
> > E.g. 'poets' couldn't be {lo'e pemfinti} in the above, could it?
>
> I can't say much about "lo'e" because I don't know what it means. If
> it has anything to do with typicalness, as the gloss suggests, then
> no, I don't think it would work there. If it only indicates that the
> sumti must be given a generic referent, similar to Carlson's analysis
> of the bare plural, I see no problem.
>
> > 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"?
>
> I don't think so, where would the "some" have come from? It would have
> to be one of the options in: "(The) dog(s) is/are/(was/were/...) small
> and hungry".
Probably I should have said "dogs are small and the dogs are hungry".
This isn't in your list of possibilities. Just to check - was that
deliberate?
> I would go with "the dogs are small and hungry" without any context.
> It would be interesting to figure out why "dogs are small and hungry"
> is so hoplessly bad. Maybe because "hungry" is a stage property and
> "small" is not (at least not in the same scale of stages).
>
> >> >> 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?
>
> I suspect that the aspect (implicit or explicit) on the predicate
> would play a crucial role. Also the type of property, if it's a
> property that applies to its argument as a whole or only through a
> temporal stage, and things like that. The latter would be part of the
> lexical entry for that predicate. This is similar to the way that the
> meaning of a predicate will determine whether a distributive or
> collective reading on its argument will be more likely. Sorry I can't
> give a full blown theory.
Now I'm even more confused.
Do you mean that there are *two ways* in which {lo plise cu farlu} could
be analysed as saying that some (particular) apples are falling - the
first being where {lo plise} is read as referring to some apples and
{farlu} as a distributive predicate, and the second being where {lo
plise} is read as a generic, and {farlu} is read as applying to some
stages of this generic?
Or do you want to combine these two into one? Perhaps with lo *always*
returning a generic?
Or something else?
> >> 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}?
>
> The right leg and the left one. (Or right legs and left legs) At this
> level of abstraction, where "lo remna" has a single (generic)
> referent, there are two referents for human legs.
(I think this is the same kind of issue as that addressed by the 'poems'
example above (namely: how generics work with functions, or
near-functions), so I'll let this be for now)
Martin
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