Subject: Re: [lojban] fancu

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 20:52:01 EDT

In a message dated 10/6/2001 6:50:56 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Could you give an example of this? Would not those that are
> equivalent always be rephraseable so as to fit the matrix?
> 

Yeah, but they might not be the one he knows, thinks of, etc. etc. The 
intensional problem that extension-claim theory has. Almost every answer 
actually has an extension-claim equivalent, which somebody might think of, so 
set-of answers covers that case, but is not restricted to it. We are ready 
for a wide range of possibilities in each case, not just the one.

<{noda 
>kalma
>le zarci},  for example,

But I have always insisted that this answer _is_ included. It is
always the one that makes the extension analysis fail, because it
is not part of the extension of {le ka ce'u klama le zarci}.>

Well, surely knowing that the empty set is the extension of {le ka ce'u klama 
le zarci} would count -- except for the intension problem. That claim 
should be in the set of answers.

<>and -- perhaps related to that last bit -- {na'i},

That one I would probably exclude. Could you give an example?>

Classics: "Have you stopped beating your wife?" when you either don't have a 
wife or have never beaten her. "How do you know the distance to the moon?" 
when you don't know it. And so on. 

<I don't see how this follows from the purported omissions.
I think I tend to rely on the specificity of {le} to select
the acceptable answers, but in any case I am not at all sure
that my analysis is complete.>

Very often "Who" questions have a presupposition that someone does whatever.  
When the answer is {noda broda}, it is also -- and more forcefully -- {na'i}. 
When dealing with And, it turns out better not to use {le}, since he tends 
to make much of its idiosyncrasies -- which can be useful, but can also get 
you into trouble (who all has to agree on what is referred to and how 
detailed must that agreement be?) 

<an array of propositional 
>functions,
>rather than taking the whole as a function to indirect questions.

I now think it has to be the other way around. {makau} is a
dependent variable and {ce'u} the independent one, in a manner
of speaking.>

For the {dunli} -{frica} cases, it works nicely the way you had it before.  
The new way is trickier on those cases, though it still comes down to the 
same sentence eventually. I flipflop back and forth and the Logic texts have 
no guidelines at all.