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Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2

Jorge Llambías, On 07/10/2014 21:59:

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:00 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>> wrote:
    Jorge Llambías, On 06/10/2014 23:10:
        On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 9:55 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com> <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>>> wrote:

             So {lo broda cu brodu} is not equivalent to {zo'e ge broda gi brodu}?

        I would say they are not equivalent because that it brodas is in one
        case presupposed and in the other case asserted.

    Okay. That answers my question. What's the rationale for your answer (i.e. for holding that the lo description is presupposed)?

I take "lo broda" to be a referring expression, not a claim, and
therefore the veridicality of its description can only be
presupposed. I'm not sure what other kind of rationale there might
be.


If {lo broda cu brodu} were equivalent to {zo'e ge broda gi brodu}, you could still say {lo broda} was a referring expression by virtue of the {zo'e} it is equivalent to. Referentiality needn't entail presupposition of the description. As rationales, I thought you might be arguing that it's better to have different ways to express different meanings rather than merely different ways to express the same meaning; or maybe you had discovered logical pitfalls with a nonpresuppositional version of {lo}.


Since "lo" is marked neither as definite/indefinite nor as
specific/generic, it is useful for identification of its referents
that it is at least veridical, This also allows maintaining the
original definition of "lo", prior to CLL: "veridical descriptor: the
one(s) that really is(are) ..."


What do you mean by 'identification'? The speaker knows what the referent is, and doesn't need to identify it to themself; and the referents aren't necessarily identifiable to the addressee.

It's not clear to me -- without knowing any literature on the matter -- that presupposition can rightly be considered veridical, but I can see why you'd think presupposition is at least tantamount to veridicality, and so is appropriate for the meaning of CLL-defined {lo}.


    I have seen attempts to define {lo} periphrastically using {zo'e}. Since afaik Lojban has no words for marking presupposition, any periphrasis (without the requisite neologistic presupposition-markers) is doomed to fail.

Yes, the usual paraphrase for "lo broda" is "zo'e noi ke'a broda",
which changes the presupposition into a side-claim, which is as close
as we could make it.


Far better to introduce an experimental cmavo for presupposition than to put about an incorrect paraphrase.


But even with that paraphase "lo broda cu brodu"
is not equivalent to "zo'e ge broda gi brodu", because "naku lo broda
cu brodu" = "naku zo'e noi broda cu brodu" = "zo'e na broda .i ta'o
ri brodu" is not equivalent to "naku zo'e ge broda gi brodu" = "zo'e
ga na broda gi na brodu".


It might be -- coherently -- that "lo broda cu brodu" = "zo'e ge broda gi brodu", while "na ku lo broda cu brodu" = "zo'e ge broda gi na ku brodu", which is what I'd had in mind. That is, the "lo broda cu brodu" = "zo'e ge broda gi brodu" equivalence is not a rule for exchanging word-strings but rather for deriving more basic logical forms from less basic ones.

--And.

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