From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Wed Feb 14 07:16:28 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 14 Feb 2001 15:16:17 -0000 Received: (qmail 6041 invoked from network); 14 Feb 2001 15:15:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Feb 2001 15:15:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3 with SMTP; 14 Feb 2001 16:16:29 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:43:40 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:59:42 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:59:22 +0000 To: jcowan Cc: xod , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta John: #And Rosta wrote: #> 3 John believes le du'u da poi ke'a mamta mi cu mad #>=20 #> (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 #>=20 #> (where it is not John that identifies the person believed to #> be mad as my mother). #>=20 #> Thus Lojban can straightforwardly disambiguate for nonnames, #> while for names, the closest approximation would be: #>=20 #> 5 John believes le du'u da poi ke'a me la ortcut cu spy #>=20 #> 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=20 secondary problem. --And.