From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Mon Aug 06 09:22:54 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 6 Aug 2001 16:22:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 35094 invoked from network); 6 Aug 2001 16:22:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 6 Aug 2001 16:22:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta3 with SMTP; 6 Aug 2001 16:22:53 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.43.101]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010806162249.HEJV710.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Mon, 6 Aug 2001 17:22:49 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: Well I guess you do learn something new every day... Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 17:21:56 +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: <4.3.2.7.2.20010805001519.00c297e0@pop.cais.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Bob: > And won't like this but ... > > no'a and nei being pragmatically defined (as are ri and ra) we have some > ambiguity as to what "this" and "next outer" mean. Anaphora almost always > are backwards referring, so that if the selbri of the next outer bridi > hasn't occurred yet, I would not be inclined to count it. > > (If And wants unambiguous exact reference, he has to use goi and cei). @$#%!!! >[] ;) If one wants unambiguous exact reference by default, then every sumti must have a goi attached. Anyway, it's intolerable that no anaphor-- antecedent relationship can be defined precisely structurally, and indeed I don't know any justification for the claim that no'a and nei are pragmatically defined. I don't deny that there are certain vaguenesses such as whether sumti tails constitute a bridi for the purposes of no'a definition; semantically they should, but syntactically perhaps not. The antecedent of no'a is a bridi, not a selbri, so the antecedent should be the mother bridi irrespective of whether the selbri of that bridi precedes or follows the no'a anaphor. > > In "le nu no'a cu rinka le nu mi djuno", the bridi one > >level up is the rinka-ing. So the one-level-up interpretation would > >be that I'm thinking about causing my knowing causing my knowing. > > > > > > mi badri le nu do djuno le du'u no'a > > > > > > > >Does it mean that I'm sad that you know that I'm sad, or that you > >know > > > >that you know (that you know, etc.) > > > > > > It means that I'm sad about the fact that you know I'm sad (about > >the fact > > > that you know I'm sad ...) > > > >Again, exactly one level up from "no'a" in "do djuno le du'u no'a" is > >the djuno-ing, so the sentence by that interpretation would be that > >I'm sad about the fact that you know that you know that you know etc. > > Pragmatically, in a bare "mi djuno ledu'u nei" I would not consider the nei > to be self representing, I would: "I know that something is an argument of the current bridi". > so the "current bridi" has to be "djuno", and no'a > refers outward from djuno, as ra refers backwards from whatever ri is > pragmatically determined to mean. > > >I really think that "no'a" would be more useful (and easier to think > >about) referring to the main bridi. > > But it was specifically intended to handle the indeterminate number of > middle cases where vo'a could not be used (hence the matching vowels). > > Only actual usage would tell us if reference frequency differs from the > patterns we assumed in the design. I expect that the usage of all but the incompetent or obtuse would be inhibited by the ill-definedness of these cmavo. Any able user would know perfectly well if they were using an ill-defined cmavo and so would be self-consciously inventing a more precise definition. This is most evident in the usage of Lojban's current ablest speaker. --And.