Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:51:49 EDT

In a message dated 10/1/2001 1:21:22 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> #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 than 
> definitional, if {le} is truly defined as +specific. Its actual definition 
> is that
> 

Well, again we probably disagree about what is definitional and what is 
illustrative. The Refgram gives it as +specific. It doesn't say that and it 
certainly doesn't explain what that is supposed to mean, but it does say that 
it is characterized by specificity and explains that as "the speaker knows 
what he is talking about." And of course the referent has to be fixed for 
the truth value to be determined (that is true even for "there is an x"). 
But the speaker has it fixed and so can determine it.

The point of the example is, of course, that there is no beauty such that I 
dreamed she kissed me; she was only a dream beauty, after all. So moving the 
{le} outside is as improper as moving any other quantified expression out is. 
Now, you may say that intensional contexts don't count, but, as the saying 
has gone, it seems unfair if you don't mention that intensional contexts 
don't count. But what about {ga noda jinga gi le jinga cu lebna roda}? In a 
way that is not equally applicable to {lo jinga}? I need to see the case 
made on more than your say-so and a mass of "determinate/specific" 
argle-bargle. Go back to basics, as you are wont to suggest, and show it.