[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
> >Sticking to (3), let's get the easy case out of the way: attributing
> >typical properties, such as living in Africa. For this, we can say,
> >"Every typical lion lives in Africa", "Every typical unicorn is white"
> >Okay, "typical lion" needs to be firmed up, but that's part of the
> >definition of the relevant brivla (fadni, or whatever), and I think
> >we're entitled to take it for granted that such a firming up can be
> >provided. The appropriate brivla can be chosen to express the mean
> >average broda and the modal average broda
>
> Right. So, in a given situation, we can sort all lions
> into typical and atypical (maybe with some borderline
> cases). We see a certain lion and we can say: "that lion
> is typical", or "that lion is atypical", (or "that lion
> is sort-of typical" in doubtful cases). So there is
> nothing particularly difficult about this notion of
> typical
>
> ro cinfo poi fadni le ka ce'u xabju makau kei lo'i cifno
> cu xabju le friko
> Every lion which is typical among lions in where it lives,
> lives in Africa
>
> (Hopefully we won't waste {lo'e} on this. It is not the
> kind of thing we say all the time such that it requires
> a special gadri.)
It's not a very gadri-ish meaning, so for that reason isn't
a prime candidate for {lo'e}, but I don't see why the form
{lo'e} is so precious that we mustn't waste it. Monosyllabic
cmavo are ultraprecious (& with hindsight, many of those
were squandered), but oodles of disyllabics are available.
> >This leaves the other class of cases, "I like chocolate", "I tame
> >the lion", "This depicts a snake", "I need a box", etc. To me, these
> >seem much more heterogeneous, but I tentatively suggest that they
> >fall into two classes
> >
> >Class A: {lo} within the scope of an implicit element
> [...]
> > mi tinbygau lo'ei cinfo
> > mi nitcu lo'ei tanxe
> >
> >Class B. The ones that don't fall under Class A. My feeling is that
> >what is going on with these is that we are referring to the type
> >rather than the tokens. Not the set, but the exemplar. It is as
> >if we abstract away from the differences among the tokens to end
> >up with a single instance
> [...]
> >This is the meaning I intend for {loi'e} and {lei'e} to have:
> > mi nelci loi'e cakla
> > ti pixra loi'e since
>
> What would you understand by {mi nitcu loi'e tanxe}?
> Isn't needing the exemplar box just what we mean by
> needing a box?
It's one way to render needing a box, but I think that the
English strictly means {tu'a lo tanxe}. English equivalents
of loi'e would include bare mass nouns, proper nouns, and
also, less consistently things like "The Afghan", "Johnny
Afghan". Sometimes "an Afghan", "Afghans", "the Afghans"
are such that I would translate them with loi'e, but I
don't think they themselves mean the same thing as "loi'e".
loi'e: I watch football
lo: I watch a football match
loi'e: I drank wine
lo(i): I drank some wine
> I really can't see any significant difference
> between your {loi'e} and my {lo'ei}. I would not hesitate
> to use {ta pixra lo'ei since}, i.e. {ta kairpixra tu'o ka
> ce'u since}. Can you think of contrasting cases where one
> gives true and the other false?
I don't want to insist on differences if the differences are
trivial. There certainly are differences:
* loi'e makes claims only about worlds where there is only
one broda.
* lo'ei creates an underspecified proposition {co'e tu'o
du'u co'e}, where the content of co'e has to be glorked.
The pragmatic contexts where they would tend to be used
are probably different. For example, with lo'ei, although
the higher co'e could be construed as jetnu, so effectively
vacuous, gricean principles would implicate something non
vacuous. So, for example, I would tend to interpret
{mi citka lo'ei plise} as habitual -- "It is habitual
that mi citka lo plise" -- because otherwise one could
equally well say {mi citka lo plise}.
Similarly, while I might say {loi'e merko -president cu
nanmu}, {loi'e merko -president cu -quaker} implicates that
generally US presidents are quakers, given the reasonable
premise that when you abstract away from the tokens to get
the type, it is the properties that are more common among
the tokens that survive.
--And.