* Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 16:05 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > {le} to me seems pretty clear: {le broda} refers, wherever it appears,
> > to some individuals which I have in mind or would have in mind
> > if I thought about it (to steal pycyn's phrase), and which I hope you
> > will be able to glork from a mixture of context and them being described
> > as brodaing.
>
> Sounds reasonable, although you might object to some individuals I
> could have in mind and which you would claim to be non-mundane and
> thus not acceptable candidates for in-mindness.
I might, I might not. I suspect that would require a painful extended
email discussion to sort out.
> > Whether I actually believe them to broda is beside the point; presumably
> > I do expect that you believe them to broda, or that you expect me to
> > expect you to believe them to broda, or etc.
> >
> > Since there's a single intended referent-bunch, {le broda} is invariant
> > under passing it through a negation.
> >
> > Obviously it isn't wholly immune to scope, because of the {ro da le
> > broda be da} issue.
> >
> > I don't see why it should be even when the description doesn't
> > explicitly mention bound variables; e.g. why {ro verba cu prami le
> > mamta} shouldn't be a reasonable abbreviation of {ro verba cu prami le
> > mamta be ri}, or why in {pu je ba ku mi'o jinga fi le bradi} we
> > should have {le bradi} getting the same referents both times.
> >
> > xorlo seems to declare that it is constant in this way - unless I'm
> > misunderstanding again? (Just being hopeful...)
>
> I could say:
>
> lo bradi noi ke'a du ma kau cu ro roi se jinga mi'o
> Enemies, whovever they be, are always defeated by us.
Yes, I know you prefer to use constant kinds in these situations, but
would you *allow* temporally varying interpretations of {lo bradi} in
{ro roi mi'o jinga fi lo bradi}?
And if I say 'please'?
> I don't know if that falls within "have in mind or would have in mind
> if I thought about it" for you.
Nor do I, currently. It would probably depend on how these entities are
implemented.
> > Anyway, {lo broda} just adds to {le broda} the side-claim that the
> > referents *actually* broda, rather than merely that I expect you to
> > think that they do (or otherwise understand me when I describe them as
> > brodaing). OK!
>
> Yes. If I say:
>
> "(ju'a/pe'i/.a'o/.ei/xu/...) lo broda cu brode"
>
> the "side claim" or presupposition, is unaffected by the
> ju'a/pe'i/.a'o/.ei/xu/... This attitudinal is only concernned with the
> main proposition. The side claim is presupposed, not asserted,
> questioned, etc. (It could be asserted, questioned, etc, but
> independently of the main proposition.)
So I see you really do mean a presupposition in the sense the term is
used in pragmatics. OK.
There's still the question of what presuppositions are being made when
the {lo} appears within a quantifier. But maybe that isn't so obscure.
If we treat our generalised quantifiers in the obvious naive way, saying
that in {PA da poi broda zo'u lo brode be da cu brodi} the prenexed
clause is interpreted once for each {da} in the extension of broda and
then the resulting set of truth values is checked against the semantics
of PA, then we precisely need that {lo brode be da} has a referent for
each such da, so we need the presupposition to hold for each such da.
So in other words, we have a presupposition for each "occurrence" of
{lo}, and we consider quantifiers to induce a (often infinite) family of
such occurrences.
Sound right?
Martin
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