From a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Mon Sep 23 20:51:50 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@lycos.co.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_3); 24 Sep 2002 03:51:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 6843 invoked from network); 24 Sep 2002 03:51:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m10.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 24 Sep 2002 03:51:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailbox-4.st1.spray.net) (212.78.202.104) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Sep 2002 03:51:49 -0000 Received: from oemcomputer (host213-121-71-222.surfport24.v21.co.uk [213.121.71.222]) by mailbox-4.st1.spray.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 86C351CAD2 for ; Tue, 24 Sep 2002 05:51:43 +0200 (DST) To: Subject: RE: [lojban] tu'o usage Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 04:53:16 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <11c.178cf211.2ac10b4b@aol.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=122260811 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin pc: > a.rosta@lycos.co.uk writes: > << > FWIW, my schooling is such that I automatically take ro broda and > ro da poi broda to NOT entail da broda. So if for no other reason > than sheer habit, I prefer nonimporting ro. > >> > Interesting. What were you schooled as and where? As a linguist, at University College London. I was only ever taught by linguists (counting formal semanticists as such), never by out and out logicians. > Even > mathematicians and linguists pretty much get this right. The the confusion may be about what "this" is. > But, since > what you say is sorta mixed categories, I suppose you might have > gotten that all from someone confused by a semieducation in the area. > I suppose you mean {ro broda cu brode} and {ro da poi broda cu > brode} entail {da broda} (or you mean "implicate" rather than > "entail"). I mean that {ro broda cu brode} and {ro da poi broda cu brode} DON'T ENTAIL {da broda}. (Caps for emphasis, not shouting.) That is, they are equivalent to {ro da ga na broda gi brode}. In saying that, I'm just describing my habits of interpretation. > It is quite true that for many people much of the time > "All broda are brode" does not entail "There are broda," but by the > same token, {ro broda cu brode} or {ro da poi broda cu brode} are not > translations of that sentence (in that sense), Right. As I understand it, this is your position, legitimately backed up by an Argument from Authority, which I'm not confident I'm capable of understanding, while Jorge takes the contrary view. I am saying that I hope Jorge is right, so as to spare me having to unlearn my habits. Of course, if I'm thereby committing some horrible logical fallacy I would want to recant, but I don't (yet) see why {ro broda cu brode} and {ro da poi broda cu brode} can't be strictly equivalent to {ro da ga na broda gi brode}. > rather {ro da zo'u > ganai da broda gi da brode} is, just like we learned in Logic 01. > {ro broda cu brode} etc. translate what is in my dialect "Every broda > is a brode" or "Each broda is a brode." Some native speakers of > English claim that their dialect does not make this distinction, but, > curiously, they then divide into two groups over which of the two > possibilities there uniform universal is -- with most going for the > non-importing admittedly. My brand of English has "all" and "every" as nonimporting, and "each" as importing, but "each" quantifies over a definite class (i.e. it means "each of the"), so the importingness is probably an artefact of the definiteness. > << > But I go along with the general desire to minimize presupposition > (though Lionel's suggestion of an explicit marker of presupposition > might be nice, though I'll leave it to someone else to propose it, > since I'm weary of incurring the scorn of Jay and Jordan). > >> > The trick seems to be a metaconjuction that works at one level like > an ordinary conjunction but at another level is not attached until > all the other operations have been gone through (see some of the > stuff about interdefining the various types of quantifiers earlier this year). I take it that the 'operations' are 'gone through' from inside to outside, i.e. mainly right to left in a Lojban-style syntax? That is, if X has scope over Y, then Y is processed before X? In that case, yes. But it's in fact not easy to see how to turn it into a concrete proposal. If you have the logical formula: P and ASSERTED: Q how should that be expressed grammatically so that it comes out like Q PRESUPPOSED: and P ? --And.