From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Oct 15 06:27:39 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_4_1); 15 Oct 2001 13:27:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 80641 invoked from network); 15 Oct 2001 13:27:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Oct 2001 13:27:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 15 Oct 2001 13:27:38 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:04:38 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:37:40 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:37:21 +0100 To: jjllambias , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] translation challenge: "If today is Monday..." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta John: #In English, "today" and "tomorrow" are normally token-reflexive, then, #but in this sentence are used in the senses "a day" and "the successor #of that day". Jorge: #The only way to solve it is to make explicit the universal #quantification that "if" hides in English. You can quantify #over all possible worlds (ro mu'ei), then, since there will #always be one in which today is Monday, that will be enough to #make the second sentence always false. (You have to limit #possible worlds to those in which Tuesdays always follow #Mondays in order for the first one to be true.) Or you can #do as John did and quantify over all days. I think this is #what goes on in English, "today" really stands for "each day", #in the same way that "you" stands for "each person" in generic #statements like "if you put your hands on the fire, you burn #yourself". That really means "for every person x, if x puts #x's hands on the fire, x burns x-self". # #For every "today" x, if x is Monday, then "the tomorrow" of x #is Tuesday. TRUE # #For every "today" x, if x is Monday, then "the tomorrow" of x #is Wednesday. FALSE This is, in fact, what I said to McCawley when he came out with the examples in question. His response was "But the sentences *say* _today_, and _today_ means 'today'; it's only the _if_ that makes it seem as though it means something else". And I agree with him. We can ditch the deictics, though. If they're a redherring: A. "If Jorge had been born in Warsaw, he'd be a British citizen" =3D false B. "Jorge is british or not born in Warsaw" =3D true C. we could change A to: "Everyone is british or not born in Warsaw" =3D false but A and C are not equivalent, and we may be wishing to make a claim only about Jorge, not about everyone. So quanifying across possible worlds is not always avoidable. --And.