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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 10:21:13 EDT

In a message dated 9/18/2002 8:44:35 AM Central Daylight Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

<<
> Sorry if my questions sound too basic: I am just trying to
> follow the discussion and understand the different point of
> views, being well aware that my lojban current understanding
> may be inapropriate.
> >>
No question is too basic if it is giving someone problems and in this case 
everything gives problems. We are in fringe areas here, where xorxes is 
advocating and trying to explain and justify a deviation from standard 
Lojban (to Llamban or Andban or ...).
Thus, some of the presuppostions in play may be non-standard and yet 
unexpressed (we three have been at this a long long time). 

<<
la xorxes cusku di'e>
> To me {da zo'u broda tu'a da} makes
> a different klaim than {broda tu'a da}, where the quantification
> of {da} is within the {tu'a} abstraction. I don't know how
> you can defend the {tu'a} expressions for intensional contexts
> if you don't think so.

I am lost here: I thought the grammar said clearly that in
{da zo'u broda tu'a da} the {da zo'u} could be freely omitted
with no change in semantic, and so I don't see how
{broda tu'a da} could claim a different thing, intensional contexts
or not. Or maybe I fail to read an other discussion where you
agree on redefining this grammar point in intensional contexts.
Could you give an example with true selbris where the two have
to be different?
The grammar clearly says a number of things that are not so in at least some 
cases (the most famous is that {a broda b} = (b se broda a} , which does not 
hold when a and b are bound in place with different quantifiers: {ro da prami 
de}, "Everybody loves somebody" is not the same as {de se prami ro da} "There 
is at least one persom whom everybody loves"). 
As for the quantifier bit, the grammar of intensional contexts has not been 
redefined, mainly because CLL does so little about defining it. So we say 
"clarified" instead of "changed." In any case, we would not want to go from 
{mi nitcu tu'a lo dinko} "I need a nail" (and any old one will do) to {da poi 
dinko zo'u mi nitcu da} "There is one particular nail I need" (or "some 
particular nails" but, in any case, nothing off the list will do). There are 
worse cases, where the embedded reference is to a non-existent, but the 
external reference is to an existent: {mi senva le du'u lo pavyselrorne klama 
mi} might well be true, but {da poi pavyselrorne zo'u mi sevna le du'u da 
klama mi} is not, since there are no unicorns.

<<
> 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

I don't understand your use of {tu'o} here. Is that what makes
{du'u ce'u du k'oe} a true property? Or to say it differently,
how do you get a property out of a predication abstraction?
{tu'o}, the "null operand" (nowhere further explained) is used here as a 
vacuous PA. The grammar requires a descriptor or a number here, but the fact 
is that there is always exactly one thing satisfying this description, so why 
get involved with all the problems (quantifiers especially) that using a 
regular form involves? Thus And and xorxes. I am not perfectly sure that 
there is always only one and I don't know what {tu'o} commits me to, so I 
prefer to use {le}, though, when I am talking with the other two, I sometimes 
fall into their usage.