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Re: [engelang] intensions & extensions (Xorban)



On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:44 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
> Jorge Llambías, On 15/09/2012 20:38:
> >
> > This second device seems more like d- than like f- though, since it
> > can apply to anything, not only situations/states-of-affairs.
>
> I'm thinking that the "(In the clouds) she saw there to be a tiger" is "la
> fa sa sma tgra vsko'ika" (or ha rather than fa, if fa is the same-world
> one), and "(In the clouds) she saw there to be a tiger" is equivalent to
> "(In the clouds) she saw a tiger".

Yes, I understand that. You can always change "perceive X" into
"perceive a situation in which something is X".

What I'm saying is that if you are going to grammatically distinguish
between same-world states of affairs and not-necessarily-same-world
states of affairs. you might as well distinguish between same-world
things and not-necessarily-same-world things. Why make the distinction
for states of affairs only?

> > How about "she was talking to God" (said by someone who doesn't
> > believe in God) or "she was talking to her dead husband" (said by
> > someone who doesn't believe in spirits)?
>
> That's not really "She was talking to someone she thought was God",
> though. She's not talking to anybody. Or, if the x2 of "talk to" is merely
> who the speaker is intending to address, who the speaker intends to direct
> the speech towards, then we can say that God and her dead husband are in the
> same world and she's talking to them. But this sense of "talk to" would also
> allow a la fa x2, "She was talking to a future greatgrandchild of hers",
> where the greatgrandchild exists only the world of her intention.

Just as the tiger that she sees in the clouds exists only in her
imagination. The difference is that in the case of "talk to" we can't
so easily use the trick of changing the addressee into an imaginary
state of affairs.

ca'aka ma xrxe