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Re: [engelang] The death of Tsar Boris



Jorge Llamb�as, On 18/09/2012 02:15:
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 9:53 PM, John Cowan<cowan@hidden.email>  wrote:

Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria died in 1943; so much is fact. It's widely
believed that the Germans murdered him by poison, but neither the cause of
death nor the identities of the killers (if any) were ever established.
How would you say in Xorban

The Germans probably killed Boris by poison.

in such a way that the factuality of his death is preserved, while the
questions of murder and poison remain open? I'm not even sure how to
adequately express this in English (other than by the two sentences at
the start of this post), but loglangs are supposed to get this kind of
thing right.

Since you want to assert his death without asserting that he was
killed, I don't think it can be done with just a predicate that means
"kill", you have to resort to "die". I would say "Tsar Boris III died
probably poisoned by the Germans."

la q Tsar Boris III qa je mrsbnxa le dtce li fi vndctreka lkni
A/'Tsar Boris III'(A): died(A)&   E/Germans(E): I/situation-in-which
poisons(E,A): likely(I)

la q Tsar Boris III qa je mrsbnxa li (ti) fi le dtce vndctreka lkni


1. moving le dtce within the scope of fi

2. possibly adding ti to override extensionality of fi, though arguably the meaning of lkni coerces a nonextensional interp of fi. On balance, I think the ti should be there, tho I might be persuaded to change that view.

--And.