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Re: [lojban] [oz] {ny poi cy ke'a falcru}




On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 11:34 PM, Felipe Gonçalves Assis <felipeg.assis@gmail.com> wrote:

 To me, the difference between {noi} and {poi} is not semantic, but pragmatic. It is all about Information Structure: When I use a incidental clause, I am indicating that the selsku is supposed to understand the reference without the additional commentary, while a restrictive one indicates that the information is essential to get the reference right.

Right, "noi" adds a comment about the referents of a sumti, but it doesn't affect the bridi in which the sumti appears. "noi" is never problematic with unquantified sumti, but with quantifier terms, "noi" can cause problems. "su'o broda noi brode cu brodi" has two possible readings. This is because the noi-clause is now being attached to something that is sintactically a term, but semantically it is not something that has referents, so we have to go searching for the things about which noi is to comment in a roundabout way.

"poi" is the opposite, it is unproblematic with quantifiers (which I think of as its home turf) but could be problematic when attached to an unquantified sumti. In the case of pure "PA da poi ..." the restriction simply defines the domain for the bound variable to range over, it is just a restriction from the universe of discourse. In the case of "PA SUMTI poi ..." we can say now that the poi-restriction is from the referents of SUMTI instead of from the total universe of discourse. Or, alternatively, we can say that the poi-clause will help determine the referents of SUMTI, and that those referents then constitute the domain for the quantifier. The end result is the same. 

It turns out we would arrive at exactly the same conclusions from your reasoning. The topic of this thread is one of the few examples in which a conflict appears.

Right. The only situation in which the two approaches will differ seems to be when "poi" is attached to a sumti that already has its referents determined beforehand. Then when the poi-clause is a proper restriction on those referents, it will be fine with the poi-as-restriction approach, but it will fail with the poi-as-referent-determiner approach. But then what is the advantage of this second approach? When both approaches work, they mean the same thing, and when they don't mean the same thing, it's because the second approach breaks down, not because it has an alternative use.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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