Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 18:36:36 +0000

la pycyn cusku di'e

>I agree that "generic" might be misleading. Is it your term or mine -- or
>And's? In any case, can you suggest a better?

I think any translation of {lo'e broda} that starts with "the"
will be misleading, as English "the" is hardly ever used for
this sense.

>Anyhow, do you understand my reading of your {lo'e}? If so, can you say 
>what
>is wrong with it as a step toward articulating the correct position?

I don't fully understand your reading of it, but it does seem
like we're converging on to something.

What do you think of the following analysis (based on And's ideas):

For a given {broda}, we define the predicate {kairbroda}, so
that it means "x1 is broda to something that has property x2".
(Let's assume broda has only two places, other places would
remain for kairbroda the same as for broda).

We can now give a precise definition of {broda} in terms
of {kairbroda}:

ko'a broda ko'e = ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u ce'u du ko'e
ko'a is broda to ko'e = ko'a is broda to something that
has the property of being ko'e

Now if we introduce quantifiers:

da zo'u ko'a broda da = da zo'u ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u ce'u du da

The same for {da poi brode}, which is {lo brode}, and
which can be moved away from the prenex, but only in the
first expression:

ko'a broda lo brode = da poi brode zo'u ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u
ce'u du da

It is clear that we cannot remove {da poi brode} from the
prenex in the right hand side expression, because that would
put it inside of du'u, and the sense of the whole expression
would change.

Now, what about the expression {ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u
ce'u du lo brode}? Is there no way to express it with
broda as the selbri? Let's define {lo'e brode} such that:

ko'a broda lo'e brode = ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u ce'u du lo brode

But {ce'u du lo brode} is just {ce'u brode}, so we can
simplify a bit more:

ko'a broda lo'e brode = ko'a kairbroda tu'o du'u ce'u brode

This can be repeated for {lo'e brode} in x1 or any other
place just by defining the appropriate corresponding selbri.

I think this analysis works for all the "intensional context"
selbri (indeed the redefinition of {sisku} was an attempt to do
something like this, the gi'uste {sisku} corresponds to the
{kairsisku} that one has to define in order to give the
expansion of {sisku lo'e brode} with original {sisku}.

But the same expansion applies to every selbri, not just the
"intensional context" ones. For example:

ko'a viska lo'e broda = ko'a kairviska tu'o du'u ce'u broda
He sees-something-with-the-property-of
being broda

(No claim that there is something such that it is seen, the
"something" of the English gloss is part of the predicate.
Normally of course there will be something that is seen,
but this is not part of what is claimed.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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