Re: i yield

Nick Nicholas <[email protected]> Thu, 14 Aug 2003 01:26:17 +1000
Newsgroups gmane.science.linguistics.lojban.jboske
Message-ID <[email protected]>
> Message: 14
> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:49:45 +0100
> From: "And Rosta" <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: i yield
>
>> unquantified gadri: ambiguous between intension and extension ---
>> between appearing in the prenex or not
>> quantified: extensional
>> LAhE3 LE gadri: intensional
>
> I still don't see how the "LAhE3 LE" works. If LE is quantified, then
> it won't work. If it is unquantified, what does it mean (and if it
> means Kind, then LAhE3 is redundant).

If LE is quantified, LAhE3 will work if I say it work, because it will 
have an idiosyncratic interpretation rule. *Like all LAhE*. To my mind, 
LAhE3 re mikce == LAhE lo mikce remei, and is an adequate rendering of 
"I'm looking for two doctors". It doesn't work? Why?

If I refuse to grant quantified lo == Kind (and I do), and we rather 
have unquantified lo be ambiguous, then obviously LAhE3 is not 
redundant: it is disambiguation. In any case, {lu'a lo broda} is legal 
and intelligible, even if redundant. So what? Remember, elegance has 
never been my criterion.

>> The ambiguity of {lo mikce} sucks, but I think it politically
>> necessary now. Those who would (a) exoticise Lojban (hello xod) or (b)
>> are semantic formalists who wish to make up for lost time and 
>> emphasise
>> intensionality wheresoever it roams should use LAhE3 and LAhE4 (= lo 
>> se
>> ka?) whensoever possible, and let it be known that by default their
>> unquantified {lo} is extensional.
> ???? Is there a typo here? Extensionality arises from quantification. 
> So
> unquantified lo can't be extensional.

CLL-lo is extensional, because of its assumed {su'o}. I refuse to be 
barred from glorking {su'o} before {lo}. I will allow you to also glork 
{tu'o}. That is as much as I will concede. Because we're obviously 
getting tangled in terminology, by unquantified I only mean "absent an 
overt quantifier"; I am admitting that {lo} without an overt quantifier 
may not even have an implicit one, but I will not admit that it must 
not.

> A compromise, which is consistent with CLL-intent, would be to make the
> outer PA glorked. Glorking it as tu'o would give intensional. Glorking 
> it
> as something else would give extensional.

That's what I'm proposing.

>> but I'm convinced default tu'o actually breaks usage. If I
>> say {lo mikce cu cpedu lo sodva}, I sure as hell ain't talking either
>> Mr Doctor or Intension of Doctor.
> I'll concede that, though I think it is clear that usage is also not
> consistent with CLL.

Usage doesn't know the time of day, though. Seriously.

>> Note that Kind is *not* necessary the solution to intensions. Kind is
>> perfectly usable in extensional contexts --- the fish and chips 
>> example
>> --- and there can equally be intensional, non-existent but distinct
>> entities. We may seriously see And's Kind split into LAhE3 and LAhE4,
>> Mr and Intension: Uniqueness is not necessarily the same as Intension.
>> That's the way John was heading in February. So the work is nowhere
>> near done.
> Can you give examples? I can't remember what it is you have in mind
> here.

I'm looking for a particular Unicorn. Not LAhE3 at all: this Unicorn is 
not the Any Unicorn. But still manifestly intensional, or at the very 
least not in the external prenex.
I eat the same fish and chips as you: certainly Mr Fish and Chips is 
involved, but I'm having a hard time crediting this is really intension 
as we know it. I think Intension and Mr are orthogonal, and John, in 
sabotaging your intent to have "All Kinds exist, whether their 
referents do or not", is who has pushed me to think so. John is being 
Extensionalist, and that, I think, is what I'm defending.

> I guess you mean "skicu fo" (describe x2 to x3 as x4). I myself am not
> sure that anything but a ka abstraction would make sense there. Or
> rather, I can see how only Kind or only ka could make sense, but not
> both, and not anything else. So I'm perplexed at this being the lydian
> stone.

Then ask Jorge. Who used that very sentence of my own usage against me. 
(Yes, I am peeved. What did you think, Jorge, that I would say "Oh, I 
used {lo} without reflection intensionally 10 years ago, before I even 
knew what an intension is, so obviously extensionalist {lo} is 
untenable"?)

It's because I too am starting to see a ka abstraction there that I 
added the proviso at the end. If this is not the Lydian stone, then 
someone come up with one (with an explicitly Unique lo that strikes all 
and sundry as commonsensical); because without that, I withdraw my 
concession. I don't think it will be hard to do so; but I need concrete 
examples.

> As I see XS (which I've now described on the wiki), it is largely
> comprised of additions to CLL -- attributions of meaning to forms that
> formerly had no meaning. The exception to this is the actual change to
> the interpretation of PA in loPA broda. The new interpretation is
> undeniably more useful (& the very unusefulness of the former meaning
> accounts for why past usage has been so meagre) but also undeniably
> at odds with CLL: it is the only part of the proposal that is in
> conflict with CLL. Had this element not been crucial to the expressive
> capability of XS, I would have removed it, so that it could be said
> that there is no conflict at all between XS and CLL.

We already have what you want mentioned in the lessons, as my 
(Johanninely blessed) extrapolation from CLL: ci lo re lo plise. If 
your only criterion is expressivity, I'd fain have you remove this 
violation of CLL. The parallelism with lePA does not compel me: I've 
learned X lo Y as another cornerstone of Lojban!

I see we're having pc join in now too, though through wiki rather than 
here. So we'll have even more chaos and dissension. Peachy.

--
κι έγειρε αργά τα στήθια τα θλιμμένα·#Nick Nicholas, French/Italian,
σαν αηδόνι που σε νυχτιά ανοιξιάτα #University of Melbourne
την ώρα που κελάηδα επνίχτη, ωιμένα! # [email protected]
στις μυρωδιές και στ' ανθισμένα βάτα.# http://www.opoudjis.net
-- Ν. Καζαντζάκης, Τερτσίνες: Χριστός#