On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Mike S. <
maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 8:36 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
>>
>> How to do this in Xorban? Just "la [poor]a [woodcutter]a"? -- No, tthat's
>> "The poor are woodcutters"? Maybe "sa
>> [hereby-newly-introduced-into-discourse]a je [poor]a [woodcutter]a"?
>
> I think we need something like this too. To save on consonants, one idea
> I had was to apply some unary operator "NV" to "s-" i.e. "NV s-". "NV s-"
> would announce that there will be an implicit binding of its variable in
> subsequent sentences, but the restriction would be stronger than those in
> implicit "l-" bindings (the ones you are on record as not liking).
>
> By "stronger" I mean that whereas "Ba Ra Pa" yields the weak implicit
> binding "[la Ra]" in subsequent sentences with free "a", in contrast "NV sa
> Ra Pa" would yield the strong implicit binding "[sa je Ra Pa]". For
> example, in:
>
> sa xrma lu fu bjra vska'aku. [la xrma] xkra.
> "I see some horse run. It [horse] is black.
>
> ... the free variable "a" in the second sentence gets the weak implicit
> binding "la Ra" from original "sa Ra Pa". In contrast, in:
>
> NV sa xrma lu fu bjra vska'aku. [sa je xrma lu fu bjra vska'aku] xkra.
> "I see some horse run. It [some horse that I see run] is black.
>
> ... the free variable "a" in the second sentence gets the strong implicit
> binding "sa je Ra Pa" from original "NV sa Ra Pa".
That may not be strong enough for what you want. It only means "some
of them are black". You could make the implicit binding be "ra je Ra
Pa" to get the stronger meaning ("all of them are black"). In either
case, that won't help with collective predications, for example if you
want to say "they are five".
> I am not sure whether it's always safe or not to use "s-" rather than "l-"
> on strong restrictions, but that seems preferable, as we are without
> question trying to bind to individuals here, not the myopic singularization.
> I have already sketched out the rules for deriving restrictions on another
> thread and I think this would work and be a nice formalization. In fact I
> would have the implicit restriction on "a" keep getting stronger throughout
> the discourse every time it appears in a predication: first [sa je Ra Pa],
> then [sa je Ra je Pa P1a], then [sa je Ra je Pa je P1a P2a], and so on. The
> specific keeps getting more specific.
What happens with:
NV sa xrma lu fu bjra vska'aku. cu [sa/ra je xrma lu fu bjra vska'aku] vske'eka?
"I see some horse run. Do you see [some/every horse that I see run]?"
Does that second use add a new restriction?
> There is a known issue with strong implicit restrictions, namely that they
> sometimes cause unwelcome effects when "na" is involved. For example:
>
> na sa xrja vfla. na [la xjra] se sme nlveka
> "It's not so that some pigs fly. It's not so that there is something that
> is a wing of them [pig]"
> "Pigs don't fly. They don't have wings."
>
> ... gets clobbered with the stronger restriction:
>
> na NV sa xrja vfla. *na [la je xjra vfla] se sme nlveka
> "It's not so that some pigs fly. *It's not so that there is something
> that is a wing of them [pigs that fly]"
> "Pigs don't fly. *They [pigs that fly] don't have wings."
It's not just "na". Other operators in front of s- can create problems:
ra nnla NV se nxle cnbake. mlbe
Every boy A, some girl E, kissed(A,E)... Pretty(E).
What's the implicit restriction on "e"? Is it: "se/re je nxle cnbake",
which in turn becomes "se/re je nxle (la nnla) cnbake"?
"ja" will also cause trouble.
> However, I don't think this problem is insurmountable. The solution is in
> noticing that you can't apply NV willy-nilly to "sa". NV would be a
> +specific marker, and it's simply infelicitous to use it to mark inherently
> non-specific arguments as in "pigs don't fly". I suspect that the exact
> rules could be spelled out without a great deal of trouble.
There seem to be two alternatives here: (1) the grammar allows NV
anywhere that a unary operator is allowed, which will result in it
allowing many uninterpretable infelicitous sentences, or (2) the
grammar only allows NV where it makes sense, which will result in a
much more complex grammar. I don't particularly like either of those
options.
ma'a xrxe