Subject: RE: "which?" (was: RE: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:23:24 PDT

la and cusku di'e

> > of the referent I mean"? "Relevantly identified"? My point
> > is that if the listener has to ask "which?" to a {le broda}
> > from the speaker it is because {le} has failed.
>
>I understand your point; but I disagree with it, if by 'failed'
>you mean 'failed to communicate what it is designed to
>communicate'.

I can't really speak for what it was designed for, but
essentially, yes, I mean 'failed to communicate what I
understand it to be supposed to communicate'.

>We can see from English that you're wrong:
>
>A: A certain cat has left the room.
>B: Which cat?
>
>-- nothing peculiar about that.

Nothing peculiar, but I don't believe {le mlatu} works for
"a certain cat" in that situation. It only works
for "a certain cat" when that is all that the listener
would be required to know to peg the cat, as for
example at the beginning of a story where the listener
is not expected to already know anything else about the
cat. If the listener is entitled to ask "which cat?",
then {le mlatu} has failed.

>For {le}, a which?-response is not necessarily to clarify a
>failed communication, but rather is a request for information
>that the {le}-user - the questionee - must have, because it was
>tacit in the use of {le}.

To me {le} cannot mean "I have all the information but
I am not necessarily giving it, so I know what I am
referring to but you may not and I don't expect you to know".

To me it has to mean "I have the information and I'm assuming
you share enough of it so that this tag I'm using works to
sufficiently determine what we're talking about".

Otherwise, the speaker is talking to themself. What they are
saying is not necessarily interpretable by the listener, and
what's more, they don't even expect the listener to be able
to interpret it. It just sounds wrong.

>A which?-response to a {lo}-statement
>is, as we agree, a request for additional information, but
>here it is not information tacit in the {lo}-statement, and
>the questionee may not have the information.

Exactly. With {lo} they may or may not have it, and the
additional information was not part of the original claim.
The claim was the same for speaker and for listener.
But with {le} the speaker has to expect the listener to be
able to peg down the referent, otherwise it is not a
reference.

> > My impresion is that a successful answer to {le mo broda}
> > should not leave the questioner with a "which broda?"
> > doubt. Do you agree at least with that part?
>
>No, I don't agree with that part.

Well, it is at least clear what we disagree about. Then
{le broda} is essentially something that speakers say
to themselves, since they are not expecting the listener
to interpret it as anything more than {da}?

> > For it to be something else than a which-question, it
> > would require the questioner to already know the
> > referent of {le mo broda}.
>
>I don't know -- it depends whether the rules of Lojban say
>that the questioner is using {le} qua {le}, as a +specific
>reference, or that questions merely map out a lexicosyntactic
>template that specifies the blank that must be filled in
>to constitute the question's answer.

If {le} was +definite instead of +specific those two
would coincide, I suppose? I don't understand how it can't be.

>Would you generalize this to all Q words within {le} sumti?
>E.g. {le patfu be ma}? I guess you would.

Yes.

>What, then, about:
>
>A: mi na jimpe le nanmu se mamta ku (goi ko'a poi ke'a vi jufra)
> [I don't understand the son, i.e. this here sentence]
>B: le nanmu se mamta be ma
> [son of what?]
>A: lo ninmu zei gerku
> [a bitch]
>
>? [I can't remember the words for 'male' and 'female'.]

There is nothing wrong with it (leaving malgico/malrarna
aside), but A's answer succeeds only if {le nanmu se mamta
be lo ninmu zei gerku} is enough for B to determine its
referent. If it isn't then "which?" has been properly asked
by B but not satisfactorily responded by A.

>Well, this is indeed a case where {le} has failed -- one
>can imagine a context like:
> A: "These two men, a scotsman and an irishman, walk
> into a pub, and the man says..."
> B: which man? The scotsman or the irishman?
>-- but note that B is not asking A to identify the referent
>from among all the men (or entities) in the world, even
>though A's use of {le} does guarantee that the reference
>is to a specific individual.

I agree about this. I don't claim that {le} has to
identify for the listener to every possible extent. It has
to relevantly identify, i.e. to the degree that the listener
does not need to ask "which?". If the listener needs to ask
"which?" then the first speaker's {le} has failed.

>But I don't get the basis on which you're supporting
>{le ki'a} for direct "which?" and "le mo kau" for indirect
>"which?".

I support {le mo} for direct speech in every situation.
I accept {le ki'a} as an alternative in some situations.

>The distinction is justified not only conceptually but also
>by the facts of natlangs: in Std Average European, indefinite
>articles can be +specific or -specific, but are -definite.
>(As for so-called definite articles, it is well-known that
>they have been the topic of furious debate for a century.
>My own view (stated in abbreviated form) is that they are
>-specific, and +definite by virtue of implicit universal
>quantification).

Well then shouldn't {le} be the same by the same virtue?

>"+specific -definite" is potentially communicatively meaningful
>because it is truth-conditionally distinct from "-specific".
>It doesn't give the addressee sufficient information to
>evaluate the truth of the speaker's utterance, but all the same,
>the addressee can still base inferences on the speaker's
>utterance.

But do we really want that to be the case for practically
all of Lojban's utterances? And are we left with any
possibility at all for definite reference? Is at least
{ti} +definite? What about {ko'a}?

> > >A; le broda goi ko'a cu brode
> > >B: ko'a mo
>
>B doesn't know exactly which entity {ko'a} refers to, but B does
>know a certain amount about {ko'a}, namely that ko'a is being
>referred to by A, is brode, and is "du da voi ke'a broda".

Only A's {voi}, not B's, so pretty meaningless if -veridical
and -definite.

>Quite
>possibily this information is sufficient for B's interpretational
>needs.

I don't understand what use is the {broda} part of {le broda}
to B if it is neither +veridical nor +definite.
Is B really expected to make anything out of "certain something
that I call a cat". -veridicality only made sense to me if
it was understood that the non-veridical reference could be
useful for the listener, but if the listener is not even
expected to use that information for identification, what is
it for? "Something that may or may not be a cat, but that the
speaker has in mind, though he is not telling me what it is
nor expecting me to understand what it is". I don't like it.

> > But I think {le mo mlatu} works perfectly, and I find it
> > more elegant than {du}.
>
>Ah well. I think we've reached an impasse. At least we can summarize
>by saying that there is no explicit means of making a "please
>identify the referent" speech-act in Lojban.

Apparently with {le} as -definite there is not even an
explicit means of making an "I am hereby identifying the
referent" speech-act, let alone ask someone else to do it.
But I have always assumed that was what {le} was for.

>The argument is over
>how to work around the gap. You go for a more elegant workaround
>that would fail in more contexts than mine that you think less
>elegant.

If {le} really is -definite then that is so. That is not how
I have been using {le} though.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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