On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 9:36 AM, v4hn
<me@v4hn.de> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 07:39:14AM -0500, Ian Johnson wrote:
> ko dunda pa plise mi is "make it true that there exists exactly one apple
> that you give to me."
> If you have an apple in mind and say that, then you're not conveying
> that you have one in mind at all.
Completely understood and absolutely right.
However, as far as I can see {ko dunda pa plise mi} does not explicitly
say whether or not you have a specific apple in mind.
It's just, that I didn't specify it, if I have one in mind.
In my opinion it's still a valid counterquestion to ask "Which one?" here,
don't you think so?
Also, if you answer with {pa plise} again, it might be a bit stupid, but still
it's a reasonable answer to say "I got that part, but which one do you want?"
in my opinion.
The question is, whether there is a way to _spell out_ that you _don't_
have one in mind instead of omitting further information and waiting
for the listener to recognize the conversational implicature.
No such way, which does not explicitly state {ko cuxna} or {mi na pensi lo selsteci},
was mentioned up to now _as far as I understood everything_
and even the {ko dunda da poi plise ku'o mi} seems to rest on a very strong
conversational implicature instead of explicitly stating that you don't
care/know which one you'll get.
That is because it doesn't seem to be a problem to me to add
{ko dunda da poi plise ku'o mi .ije mi djica lonu do dunda lo zunle traji mi}.
However, it is weird to say something like "Give me any apple. I want the leftmost one."
or "Gib mir irgendeinen Apfel. Ich will den ganz Linken." (in my mother tongue).
Any opinions?
v4hn