Re: [lojban] semantic parser - tersmu-0.1rc1

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

I can't (with a straight face) claim to have followed this discussion, but I 
offer this tidbit about relative clauses.  A restrictive relative clause 
attaches to a description *and are part of that description*.  That is, for 
Lojban, {lo broda (ku?) poi brode} is just {lo broda Ce brode} ( I can never 
keep all the various versions of the logical connectives straight, nor be sure 
what is meant to be connected here, predicates or bridi tails or something else 
altogether).  Consequently, it is unaffected by various operators within whose 
scope it lies, just like the predicate inside the official description.  This 
latter is true also of non-restrictive relative clauses, but they are simply 
separate sentences: {lo proda noi brode cu brodi} is {lo broda cu brodi .ije lo 
broda cu brode}.  I am not sure about {voi}, but whichever, it is independent of 
the operators within whose scope it lies.



----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, November 26, 2011 9:41:14 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] semantic parser - tersmu-0.1rc1

* 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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