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* Tuesday, 2012-09-11 at 11:15 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>:
> Martin Bays, On 11/09/2012 03:13:
> > I'd just like to briefly surface to say that I'd also be very interested
> > to see an account of this "andoxorxesian" l-.
> >
> > In an attempt to prompt one, here's the impression I've got from my
> > half-following of this thread:
> > you have la Ra Pa doing two things:
> > (a) creating a presupposition that the current situation
> > contains a unique individual satisfying R;
>
> Yes, where the individual is the only individual thatsatisfies R.
>
> > (b) binding a to that unique individual.
> >
> > Is that roughly right?
>
> Yes. And the important thing to grasp is that that's where the rules
> of the language end. The rules of the language don't tell you how to
> interpret sentences; they don't tell you what to do when you encounter
> "la Ra" yet you believe it is true that there are many R. I know how
> *I* as a user would interpret them, but that's different from the
> formal rules of the grammar. The formal rules of the grammar just give
> the presupposition and leave it at that.
I'm not sure how to take this. How can I understand the presupposition
"exists unique a such that Ra" without knowing how to interpret Ra?
Do you mean that you envision the rule as being a purely syntactic one,
which converts "la Ra Pa" to an expression in a new formal language
which (somewhere, I'm not sure where) includes an expression like
"E! a. Ra", and that although you have in mind some way to interpret this
new language (including interpreting this expression as
a presupposition), you don't want to discuss how to interpret the new
language?
If that's right, could you explain the reasoning behind this position?
In any case, I'm going to assume that what you actually have in mind is
something like the following: confronted with "la Ra Pa", the will
listener to try to guess the situation the speaker could be talking
about, based on context and the information that this situation contains
a unique individual a satisfying R, and then to interpret the speaker as
claiming the truth of Pa in this situation. But see below for why I'm
not really happy with this use of situations.
> You are welcome to develop a dialect that does have rules specifying
> how to interpret sentences.
>
> >If so, how does (a) work exactly? What's the
> > scope of the presupposition, and what does "current situation" mean? Am
> > I right to bring in situations, which I mean in the sense of
> > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/situations-semantics/, here?
>
> The current situation is the one the truth-conditions of the l-
> formula is evaluated against. I think distinguishing situations from
> UoD is a helpful move.
Maybe. But in situational semantics (disclaimer: I don't actually know
anything about situational semantics), claims are still meant to be
evaluated against whole worlds.
One could try to turn the presupposition into an actual claim about
subsituations:
w |= "la Ra Pa" iff
exists s<=w s.t. (
s |= exists unique a. R(a)
/\ s |= exists a. (R(a) /\ P(a)) )
, but sadly this doesn't fit the rule
"na la Ra Pa <=> la Ra na Pa"
- just because there's a situation with a unique cat which isn't black
doesn't mean there's no situation with a unique cat which is black.
I think it would help alot, actually, if you could clarify what you mean
by this rule. In what sense is that equivalence to be read? If we
interpret both sentences within the same situation, and that situation
satisfies the presupposition, then of course they get the same truth
value. Is that all that's meant? Or do you mean something stronger, that
when speaking I can substitute one for the other and expect to convey
the same information? I don't see how to get the latter.
> Then we can say that the scope of the presupposition is the l-
> formula, which describes a situation, but that the 'referents' of
> l-bound variables enter the general UoD. For example, in one formula
> it might be presupposed that there is only one Martin, but in another
> it might be allowed that there are many, and the UoD is populated both
> by "the one-and-only Martin" and by sundry "one-of-many Martins".
>
> > Furthermore, it seems that the intention is that this construction
> > should work in concert with some ontological assumption that there are
> > things called "myopic singulars". Is it possible to communicate with you
> > in the language without understanding what those are? If, as I suspect,
> > not, could you explain what they are?
>
> A user could be of any of these three sorts:
>
> A. The user construes things as types that have subtypes, using l to
> point to the type, and s & r to quantify over subtypes. Every subtype
> has its own subtypes so there are uncountably infinitely many types.
> B. The user takes it that the world against which truthconditions are
> evaluated contains individuals and categories, these are different
> things, and it is clear which is which. The user uses l- to point to
> individuals and s- and r- to quantify over members of categories.
> C. The user takes it that the world against which truthconditions are
> evaluated contains individuals and categories, these are different
> things, but it is not clear which is which -- is an apparent
> individual in fact different similar-looking individuals? Are
> apparently different individuals in fact the same individual? This
> user would avoid referring to individuals, instead so as to be on the
> safe side always quantifying over members of (possibly singleton)
> categories with -s and r- and avoiding l-.
I'll leave this here for now. I don't understand it yet, but I'm hoping
to after some of the issues above are cleared up. One thing which might
help, though: could you confirm my suspicion (based on vague
recollection of what you've said in the context of lojban) that in all
cases, you would have e.g. types of cats of various levels and
(in B and C) individual cats all satisfying mlt_?
> I won't comment on the extent to which users of the different sorts
> can communicate with each other. I think it's not a linguistic issue,
> unless you were to give the language overt A- B- C- modes.
OK. The dictionary entry of 'mlt', however, is a linguistic issue
(though not a grammatical issue).
> Myopic singulars are where you merely assume that any apparently
> different instances of X are actually the same instance of X.
I'll leave this too.
Martin
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