Re: [engelang] Xorban experimental tense markers - engelang messages

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:

> Where I am
> starting to lean is that "l-" is some sort of definiteness indicator, a
> loose one which happens to admit generic readings, such as "the lion lives
> in the jungle" (much as natural languages often use definite articles for
> very much the same expressions).

I think l- neutralizes any definite/indefinite distinction, but if you
are happy with generics being definite, I think it may not hurt saying
l- is definite.

It's probably better not to say that given the commonest meaning of the word "definite" in linguistics, even if we can conceive of it being true (as it well may be) on some level of analysis. Maybe we can say that "l-" allows both definite and generic readings depending on context; "s-" readings are basically indefinite. Without a clear definition of "l-", we're all just following our mother language intuitions about when to use it. It's no good pretending otherwise IMHO.

An interesting side question is what Xorban might have looked like had Jorge LLambías of Buenos Aires been born Georgiy Lyambyavich of Moscow.

> If this were admitted, then we could
> extend FOL with a sort of epsilon calculus (which is actually currently used
> in contemporary linguistics) and have finally a formal basis for "l-".

I don't know much about epsilon calculus. From reading
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epsilon-calculus/ and
http://www.iep.utm.edu/ep-calc/ there does seem to be something of a
connection. If l- was the epsilon thingy, quantifiers would then be
defined as:

sa sma mlta = la mlta mlta
ra sma mlta = la na mlta mlta

(The latter could be read as something like "that which is the closest
thing we have to being a non-cat is a cat", which means everything is
a cat.)

co ma'a xrxe

It hadn't dawned on me that such a sentence might surface from formalizing "l-" as the epsilon operator, but I think I could tolerate anything more than having no formalization at all. A version of that sentence that we might more realistically encounter might be:

ra sma sma = la na sma sma.

What would your opinion of the truth value(s) of those sentences have been, before and after reading about epsilon calculus?