Subject: Re: [lojban] notes on conventional implicature

From: "Lionel Vidal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:41:56 +0200

and:
> Lojban definitely has conventional implicature:
> * some UI
> * "le broda" is equivalent to
> "[unasserted:] da poi ro lu'a ke'a broda .... [asserted:] ro lu'a
da"
> However, these are special cases. Other debated cases have been
> resolved against conv-implic.

I agree, but I would have found more 'natural' for a logical language
to avoid these special cases by having no conv-implic and maybe
some explicit mechanism (special cmavos maybe) to allow it on demand.
Truth value affectations would have been much cleaner.

pc:
>So the point here is that uttering a sentence with {lo INNER broda} in
it --
>even if INNER is implicit -- commits you to there being INNER broda.
>If there are not, then the whole is meaningless, {na'i}-false -- and so is
its denial.
> Negations and negation boundaries do not affect this inner value. We do
not
>say that the negation of {lo broda cu brode}, {lo brode na brode} is going
> to result in {ro lo me'iro brode naku brode} when we move the negation
through,
> but just {ro lo broda naku brode} where {lo broda} is still implictly {lo
ro broda}

But to be consistent, this should also be true in when INNER actually set
the cardinality of the underlying subset of broda, as in{lo ci broda cu
brode},
which I would read as {ge lo'i broda cu ci mei gi lo broda cu brode},
and has such is indeed affected by negation boundaries. Or do you consider
than this cardinality is never really asserted, but belongs to {na'i}
domain,
i.e. be the same kind of presupposed implications, despite being explicitly
stated?

mu'omi'e lioNEL