Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 19:27:10 +0100

>>> <[email-masked]> 10/01/01 05:41pm >>>
[email-masked] writes:
#> Because "le" sumti can be exported to the outermost bridi (and beyond),
#> while "lo" sumti are quantified in the localmost bridi. 
#> 
#> Where we do have 'intensional contexts' they consist of a bridi that
#> is sumti of an 'intensional predicate'. A lo sumti that occurs within
#> such a bridi cannot be exported out of it, and hence is confined to
#> the intensional context. The same is not true for "le". 
#> 
#> You are right that both "le" and "lo" are in themselves extensional.
#
#An interesting rule; whence cometh it?  

A mixture of mutually-reinforcing reason and lojban tradition.

We insist that the scope of the quantification of {lo} be determinate.
The how-to-say-its work out easiest if {lo} is bound in the localmost.

As for {le}, it is in the nature of specificity that it works that way,
so there was no decision to take.

#mi senva le nu le melba cu cinba mi

I am guessing (correct me if I'm wrong) that you mean to say that that
sentence has a reading that is not equivalent to

le melbi goi ko'a mi senva le nu ko'a cenba mi

If so, I don't see it. I can't think of any way of reading the one sd true
and the other as false, for some context.

Just to preempt a possible round of exchanges, "le" is sometimes
glossed as "the speaker knows which". This is merely indicative rather thandefinitional, if {le} is truly defined as +specific. Its actual definitionis that
the referent must be fixed before the truth-conditions can be evaluated.

--And.