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Jorge Llamb�as, On 16/09/2012 00:42:
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:44 PM, And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:Jorge Llamb�as, 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?
I take it that you consider the f/h contrast to be grammatical rather than lexical, and, say, the know/belive contrast to be lexical rather than grammatical> Anyway, the answer to your question is that the distinction between same-world things and not-necessarily-same-world things can be expressed using the distinction same-world situations and not-necessarily-same-world situations, there is a ready mechanism for expressing the distinction between same-world situations and not-necessarily-same-world situations, and there is no ready mechanism for expressing the distinction between same-world things and not-necessarily-same-world things. Also, the same-world situations and not-necessarily-same-world situations is perhaps especially important regarding salient semantic contrasts such as de re vs de dicto.
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.
Which example do you mean? I did say (unclearly) that the x2 of "talk to" could be a "la fa la sma [future greatgrandchild of hers]a", where "talk to" here means "X speaks and X intends that the speech be directed to Y". --And.