Subject: Re: [lojban] zo'e interpretation

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 10:48:29 EDT

Thank you for the kind words. I will look forward to your further comments. 
Are there any now that might help shape the form of the enxt couple of 
sections: quantifiers and descriptions at a current guess?

I do agree that the standards set are too high, but I note that I did not set 
them; I just report what is said. They fall, as you might expect, just 
because the gricean factors defeat their actual application in real 
situations. 

As for {zo'e} as a case, I think that most of the sorts of things that are 
said various places in Refgram and the lists would work fine: "a typical 
thing," "the usual thing," or even just "something" without cluttering up the 
bound variables (tightest scope and not reprieves).

In a message dated 10/2/2001 9:29:44 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> We agree that no rules that must substitute for Gricean processes will work
> for this problem or for any another; no grammar can ever be elaborate 
> enough to fully determine utterance interpretation.
> 
> I think, and I think you agree with me, that it is possible to have a rule 
> that always gives zo'e a determinate sentence-meaning at the level of What 
> Is Said, so long as we recognize that such a sentence meaning is then input 
> to inferential Gricean processes that are beyond the scope of rules and
> grammar.
> 
> Since all of the language is in that situation (i.e. however determinate the
> sentence meaning, it is always thereafter at the mercy of pragmatics), I 
> don't see an interpretation rule for zo'e as being any more fragile than 
> other interpretation rules. So the standards you are setting for what would 
> count
> as a viable zo'e interpretation rule seem unfairly high.
> 
> But this is only one small quibble about a document that was in all other 
> respects nothing but useful. (I did have further comments and questions, 
> but planned to save them until further instalments appear and until the 
> current debates get less hectic.)
> 
> --And.
>