Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:59:22 +0000

John:
#And Rosta wrote:
#> 3 John believes le du'u da poi ke'a mamta mi cu mad
#> 
#> (where John identifies the mad person as my mother)
#>
#> 4 da poi ke'a mamta mi zo'u John believes le du'u da is mad
#> 
#> (where it is not John that identifies the person believed to
#> be mad as my mother).
#> 
#> Thus Lojban can straightforwardly disambiguate for nonnames,
#> while for names, the closest approximation would be:
#> 
#> 5 John believes le du'u da poi ke'a me la ortcut cu spy
#> 
#> 6 da poi ke'a me la ortcut zo'u John believes le du'u da spy
#
#Indeed, that distinction does not work, because "la ortkut" means
#that which I (the speaker) call "Ortcutt". But we can convert
#it into a true predication thus:
#
#5a la djan. -believes le du'u da poi selcme zo .ortkut. cu -spy
#i.e. John believes that what is named "Ortcutt" is a spy
#i.e. reference de dicto
#
#5b da poi selcme zo .ortkut. zo'u la djan -believes le du'u da -spy
#i.e. there is something named "Ortcutt" that John believes to be a spy
#i.e. reference de re
#
#This presumes that John & the speaker don't disagree on the actual
#referent of "Ortcutt".

I'm surprised Jorge hasn't picked on this yet. Maybe it's nighttime
in Argentina.

The problem with this is that the ambiguity is not necessarily
about the name _Ortcutt_ per se. For example, if all John believes
is that the head of MI5 is a spy, and I happen to know that the
head of MI5 is Ortcutt, then (5b) would be appropriate but if
John has clocked Ortcutt as a spy -- i.e. identified the individual
-- but nonetheless does not know the *name* of that individual then
I would want to use the de dicto reading but not the onomastically-
based formulation that you propose. John's belief is that the
possessor of Ortcuthood is a spy, not that the bearer of the name
Ortcut is a spy.

That's the main problem. A second problem is your use of "da poi"
rather than "ko'a poi", because infinitely many individuals may
bear the name ortkut (remembering that Lojban defines zo ortkut
as a phonological string, not as a word (replete with sense,
syntactic properties, etc etc)). But "ko'a poi" fixes this 
secondary problem.

--And.