Re: Mr. Bird has 2 wings (was: essentials of a gadri system)

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Jorge Llambías wrote:

>
> la xod cusku di'e
>
> > > {mi viska lo'e cipni} without context, is a very vague statement.
> > > It can mean "I usually see birds", "I saw birds", "I am seeing a bird",
> > > etc. We can disambiguate using more precise words, or maybe context
> > > is enough, or maybe we don't need to be more precise. It is not a
> > > claim about a characteristic property of birds.
> >
> > Something about the vagueness of this definition seems like le cipni would
> > be just as good. After all, le cipni can refer to generalized Mr. Bird
> > just as easily as it can refer to some specfic instances.
>
> It's different. If I say: {ca le purlamdei mi viska lo'e cipni}
> "Yesterday, I saw birds", you can say {mi go'i}, "me too".
> If I say {ca le purlamdei mi viska le cipni}, "yeterday, I saw
> the bird", you would probably ask "which bird?". If you said
> {mi go'i} I would suspect you didn't understand me, because
> I doubt that we could both see the same bird the same day, given
> the distance apart we are.


This reminds me very much of the {President, Republican, 1992} example of
Nick's. Intensionally (?) I too can say the same sentence and have it be
true. Extensionally(?) the specific birds we saw are different.

.i no'i xa'i go'i


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