Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: fancu

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 20:50:14 EDT

In a message dated 10/10/2001 8:48:29 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> > > "it is bogus that I have stopped beating
> > > my wife", which to me means that I haven't stopped.
> >
> >Hmmm. OK, bad example -- but you get the point, which is made as well by
> >your version: that the presuppositions of the included sentence do not go 
> >up
> >to the enclosing one.
> 
> What? I think it supports my point. If someone asks me
> "is it bogus that you have stopped beating your wife?" I will
> answer {na'i}, which means that the presuppositions did go up.
> 

Ok. Let me unpack "bogus": "The claim that I have stopped beating my wife 
violates its own presuppositions." I see no presuppositions coming up from 
the included sentence to affect the meta-claim. If there are some, what are 
they? 
Similarly, I see no presuuposition from the included claim to "John knows 
whether I ahve stopped beating my wife" as a report that John knows that some 
presuppositions of the included question are not met.

<The way I see it, the questioner, when asking a question,
presents the listener with a set of answers, from which the listener
is supposed to pick one. When the listener finds that no member
of the set is adequate, the response is {na'i}. It says that the
set is inadequate, it is not just another member of the set.
The listener is not playing along with the questioner in this
case.

A similar case happens when the response is {ki'a}. This again
is not yet another member of the presented set. It is rather an
indication by the listener that they can't make out what set
the speaker means to present.>

On the other hand, this looks like a plausible aternate theory. The parallel 
with {ki'a} is particularly convincing. And getting rid of the {na'i} form 
would simplify the schema. Perhaps we need to distinguish between responses 
and answers. 
The problem may be that the standard theory, while talking a Gricean line, in 
fact takes the set of answers as being generated by the sentence (in context, 
to be sure) and not by the questioner. Of course, the questioner cannot have 
unlimited control -- loaded questions are the exception, and questions get 
asked to which the answer is beyond the questioners previous ken, so some 
middle position remains to be spelled out.