* Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 11:02 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >
> > {noi broda} is veridicial - it affects the truth conditions of the
> > claim, so it can't be scope-invariant.
> >
> > {voi broda} is non-veridicial - it doesn't affect the truth conditions,
> > so is scope-invariant. It just gives hints to help the listener
> > understand the intended referents of the sumti it's attached to, by
> > noting that they satisfy broda (or appear to satisfy broda, this being
> > all that's relevant).
>
> The veridicality of "noi" means that the subordinate clause is a
> veridical claim about its subject, it has nothing to do with how it
> affects (or rather doesn't affect) the truth of the main clause. The
> non-restrictiveness of "noi" is what makes it independent of the main
> clause.
Hmm. I wonder if I now finally understand part of xorlo: would you say
that {lo broda} is equivalent, under this side-clause interpretation of
{noi} you've just set out, to {le broda noi broda}?
I never understood how it could be veridical, and spelt {lo} rather than
{le}, and yet be invariant under negation scope. This would explain it.
> I can't comment on "voi" since we don't really know whether it's
> supposed to be restrictive or non-restrictive. It could very well be
> both non-veridical and restrictive: "the woman that I described as a
> man" vs "the woman, who I described as a man". I'm not sure which one
> of those "lo ninmu voi nanmu" is supposed to be.
I don't know about {lo}, but presumably {le broda ku voi brode} is
equivalent to {le broda je brode}.
To me that suggests that {ko'a voi broda} be not exactly restrictive,
but rather something like "disambiguatingly incidental". It describes
ko'a as satisfying broda, with the intention that this makes clearer the
intended referents of {ko'a}. So {ro da voi nanmu cu broda} is highly
unhelpful, as it describes everything as being a man, but isn't actually
false unless something doesn't broda.
This looks like a useful role for it, whether or not it was the
originally intended one, no?
Martin
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