From jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU Fri Feb 09 12:35:43 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 9 Feb 2001 20:35:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 61839 invoked from network); 9 Feb 2001 20:35:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 9 Feb 2001 20:35:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO simba.math.ucla.edu) (128.97.4.125) by mta2 with SMTP; 9 Feb 2001 20:35:41 -0000 Received: from localhost (jimc@localhost) by simba.math.ucla.edu (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id f19KZcd00400; Fri, 9 Feb 2001 12:35:38 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: simba.math.ucla.edu: jimc owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 12:35:38 -0800 (PST) To: And Rosta Cc: lojban Subject: RE: [lojban] RE:su'u In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: "James F. Carter" On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, And Rosta wrote: > Lojbab: > > I is a mere label assigned by the speaker, hopefully allowing > > communication, like "le" descriptions. > > "le" descriptions aren't a mere label. They describe the referent, > even though the description is not claimed to be true. I don't think that's quite the right distinction. In JCB's famous example: "Hey, the woman is a *man*!", the whole point is that the sumti after "le" is not veridical and everyone (now) knows it. I read this to imply: You choose the sumti so the listener gets some help identifying which referent you're talking about. It would be cheating to say "the cat is a man", unless he were dressed up in a feminine cat costume. But the sumti is not a description. A description is a very heavy commitment by the speaker and is veridical. A "le" sumti has a different purpose and a different, lesser weight than a description. Think of the key versus the value or field content in a database lookup: the values are what is supposed to be true, or what you're supposed to be able to rely on from the database, whereas the key is a throwaway instrument for obtaining the value. Even so, it's a fact that "le" sumti potentially could be asserted truly, because it's very efficient to identify referents by characteristics which (you think) are obviously true to the listener. By analogy, database keys are often values from fields of another table, e.g. in a join. So the "le" sumti is potentially chosen arbitrarily by the speaker, but an effective speaker will go beyond the strict rules of the language and make an optimal choice from the arbitrary possibilities, which (usually) truly applies to the referent. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)