[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:08 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>
> The context here was meant to be that we are assuming that everyone is
> loved by some chihuaua (in the sense
> FA x:person. EX y:chihuaua. loves(y,x)),
> and everyone is loved by some German shephard.
>
> It wouldn't follow in english that some dog loves everyone, nor that
> some dogs love everyone, nor that some kinds of dogs love everyone, nor
> anything else I can think of along the same lines.
>
> But it would follow that
> {ro prenu cu se prami zo'e noi tci,uaua} (1),
> and, unless I'm misunderstanding, your interpretation of that zo'e
> makes the following true (in domains of discourse where (1) holds):
> {da poi tci,uaua cu prami ro prenu} (2).
>
> I don't think this has an analogue in english, nor in any other rarbau
> I know.
Let's see. We have four sentences:
1L: ro prenu cu se prami su'o tciuaua
1E: Everyone is loved by some chihuahua.
2L: ro prenu cu se prami zo'e noi tciuaua
2E: Everyone is loved by chihuauas.
3L: zo'e noi tciuaua cu prami ro prenu
3E: Chihuahuas love everyone.
4L: su'o tciuaua cu prami ro prenu
4E: Some chihuahua loves everyone.
We also have two domains of discourse:
D1 = {lo prenu ku xi pa, lo prenu ku xi re, lo prenu ku xi ci, .., lo
tciuaua ku xi pa, lo tciuaua ku xi re, ...}
= {person_1, person_2, person_3, ...., chihuahua_1, chihuahua_2, ...}
D2 = {lo prenu ku xi pa, lo prenu ku xi re, lo prenu ku xi ci, .., lo tciuaua}
= {person_1, person_2, person_3, ...., chihuahuas}
D1 and D2 are not the same domain. Sentences 1 and 4 "put us" in
domain D1, while sentences 2 and 3 "put us" is domain D2. By that I
mean that those are the natural domains in which to interpret those
sentences without any more context. Do we agree so far?
I think we are both in full agreement that sentences 4 entail
sentences 1, but sentences 1 do not entail sentences 4.
I claim that sentences 2 and 3 entail one another. At this point I'm
not sure whether you agree with that or not.
I make no claims about any entailments between 2-3 and 1 or 4, since
they have different natural domains of discourse. You are saying, if I
unerstand you correctly, that 1 entails 2, and that 3 entails 4 (or
that I am claiming that they do), and that therefore 1 entails 4 and
we (or I) have a contradiction.
I think that the only way you can move from 1 to 2 is by changing your
domain of discourse, so there is no logical entailment there.
> I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to have as a frequent element of
> the domain of discourse an individual "chihuahuas" which gerkus and can
> be a value of {da}... but this is kind of a separate issue. Here I'm
> just saying that there shouldn't be one which gerkus and also pramis
> everything which any chihuahua pramis.
In the same domain of discourse? I agree. As I've been saying, mixing
generics and their instances in the same domain of discourse is not
impossible, but it requires extra work. If chihuahuas are dogs, and
Spot is a dog, and Pichichus is a dog, that doesn't mean we have three
dogs there. We can't just add Spot, Pichichus and chihuahuas together
to get three.
>> >> "I love buying things, but then I never know where to put them."
[...]
>> If the objection is that the statement is too coarse grained for your
>> taste, that you prefer statements that are more precisely nuanced,
>> that's fine, but that doesn't mean that the coarse grained statements
>> violate any logical rule.
>
> No, my objection is that the english pronoun "them" has a more
> complicated anaphoric meaning which is being lost by working only with
> the generic "things".
OK, but consider these two points:
(1) "I love bumping into John, but then I never know what to talk
about with him."
Would your analysis of "him" also require that it picks up the same
stages of John that I bump into? If so, this has nothing to do with
"them" referring to a generic, since the same type of issue would
arise with John-him. If not, why not?
(2) "I love buying things, except when they are too expensive."
Would your analysis of "them" in the original sentence be the same as
the analysis of "they" in this sentence? If you use a different
analysis, it seems to me you are making pronouns much too ambiguous.
The way I would capture what you claim is being lost by the generic is
something along these lines (which I'm not claiming is anywhere close
to a formal theory as I'm presenting it):
It is part of the meaning of "buying" that when you buy things you end
up having them, and it is part of the meaning of having things that
you can put them places, so there is a natural semantic connection to
be made when talking of buying things and of putting things in places
that we are talking of the same things, the same manifestations of
things. But I don't think this connection is hidden in the pronoun.
It's the same as with the John case, it is part of the meaning of
someone bumping into someone else that they have to be in the same
place at the same time, and when two people are in the same place at
the same time they can talk. So there is a natural connection to be
made when talking about bumping into someone, and of talking with
someone, that the same stage of that someone is involved in both
cases. But I don't think that this connection is hidden in the pronoun
either, it follows from the type of situations involved. If the next
sentence used the same pronoun with a predicate that didn't have to
involve the same stages, the referrent of the pronoun would not
change.
For (2) the connection to be made goes through a different route:
buying things requires things to have prices, and things having prices
mean things can be expensive, so again there is a natural connection
to be made there that the manifestations of things involved in the
buying of things excepted from being loved are those manifestations
that are expensive. But I don't see how that can be adjudicated to the
pronoun.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.