From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Sat Sep 22 11:24:24 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 22 Sep 2001 18:24:24 -0000 Received: (qmail 54786 invoked from network); 22 Sep 2001 18:24:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 22 Sep 2001 18:24:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta1 with SMTP; 22 Sep 2001 18:24:24 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.41.83]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010922182420.PFWA710.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 22 Sep 2001 19:24:20 +0100 Reply-To: To: Subject: RE: [lojban] RE: set of answers. Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 19:23:37 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <131.19c5c0c.28d4e351@aol.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" pc: > a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com writes: > To me it seems as though there are two aspects to answers that need to > be disentangled. On the one hand, an answer -- call it an 'illocutionary > answer' is any information that is as relevant as the answerer's knowledge > allows. On the other hand, an answer -- call it a 'logical answer' -- > is a specification of the extension of a category (or so I think). > Sometimes a non-l-answer can nevertheless be an i-answer, e.g. "lo ninmu > (cu klama)" as an answer to "ma klama", in a context where, say, the > answer has no more relevant information, or where this information is > sufficient to satisfy the questioner's needs. > > But my feeling is that interrogatives and qkau involve only logical > answers -- illocutionary answers are a red herring. > > A nice distinction. I think that we will need to allow illocutionary > answers, so as to encompass cases like "believes" and maybe "same" > and "different." We'll see what happens as more cases come under the > microscope. I'll need to see concrete examples of where illocutionary answers might be needed, because I'm finding of any myself. Let me try. You want to be able to sat "John has an opinion about who went", such that this covers a case where John's opinion is that the set of goers includes da poi ninmu. I would handle this case not by using indirect questions that allow for i-answers, but rather by, say, "la djan jinvi tu'odu'u lo'i klama mo kau", or da zo'u la djan jinvi tu'odu'u de ge cmima tu'o -extension tu'odu'u ce'u klama gi da ckaji de > > > Does this mean that you don't accept set-of-answers theory-- which I > knew already -- or that you don't think this is how to say in Lojban > "the set of answers to the question{...}? Gee, it looks exactly > right to me; what is the problem. I don't accept that the set-of-answers theory gets us to a satisfactory analysis of qkau. But what I meant was the latter -- that I don't accept that "lo'i du'u ma kau broda" is the way to say "the set of answers to the question 'ma broda'". I don't reject it outright, though; my position is that that meaning does not automatically follow from the constituent parts, but that since I can think of no other sensible meaning it is an unobjectionable interpretive convention. > but I don't > think that for our purposes it counts as eliminating qkau, for the > same reason > as other extensional formulations fail.> > > But I am not trying to eliminate Q-kau, only to explain it and bring > it under rules. It turns out that I can also often eliminate it -- > in different ways in different cases. So, if what I say is correct, > I am content. I think I've said in other messages that I don't think qkau can be explained unless we can eliminate it (from underlying logical forms). --And.