Subject: RE: [lojban] lo with discourse-scope?

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 01:56:11 -0000

John:
> And Rosta wrote:
> 
> > "An/This Englishman walks into an Irish pub. He goes up to the bar and..."
> > 
> > Which Englishman?
> > It doesn't matter -- any old Englishman.
> > So not {le glico} then?
> > No.
> 
> I disagree: I think this is "le glico (bi'u)" = +specific -definite.
> It's true that there's no particular Englishman in the Real World
> that you are referring to, but he is quite specific in the Joke World.

Does he have a particular identity that has to be established before
the truth of the statement can be evaluated? (that being the criterion
of specificity)
I can't readily think of any arguments pro and con your point. But I
do perceive a difference between "In the forest there lived a poor
woodcutter" or "An/this Englishman walks into an Irish pub", on the
one hand (jokes, fairy tales), and, on the other hand, an indefinite
NP introducing a character in a novel. The difference seems to be
whether there is backstory; the novel is a window onto a whole 
(fictional) world, while the joke or fairystory world contains only
what is in the story itself. So if a novel begins with "A policeman
drew up in a squad car", the reader may legitimately (according to
conventions of the genre) ask "Which one?", even if no answer is
available, whereas with jokes or fairystories the "which?" question
is inappropriate. I'm not sure what the implications of this are for
gadri choice, but I'm not convinced that "le glico" is okay.

> > So what we need is a way to indicate an existential quantifier that 
> has scope
> > over an entire text?
> > Yes.
> > And how do we do that?
> > I've no idea. I'll ask The List.
> 
> If you want to do that, then use a prenex before tu'e...tu'u:
> 
> da poi glico zo'u tu'e [as many sentences as you want] tu'u

Good. This is what I was after, though you can still try to persuade
me that I don't need it.

--And.