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xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
>
> >The case made for {tu'o} included:
> >
> >1. We don't want to *claim* that lo'i broda cu pa mei. We want
> >to treat it as presupposition
> >
> >2. We simply don't want to have to arbitrarily choose among
> >redundant contrasts: e-gadri vs. o-gadri, V-gadri vs. Vi-gadri
> >
> >3. Given that one reason to mark singularity is to make the
> >meaning easier to process, it is counterproductive to have to
> >do this by adding an extra word (pa)
> >
> >loi'e/lo'e satisfies (1-3)
>
> I understand that was your case for {tu'o}, but mine
> was just:
>
> 4. We are not interested in looking at the extension of
> {lo'i broda}, or even in whether or not there is an
> extension
Okay. But in all cases I have so far encountered, these "intensional
claims" can all be paraphrased by an extensional one, and indeed
that is the only way that I am currently capable of making sense
of them. So I have no yen at all for (4), and am quite flummoxed
when faced with your & Adam's yen for it.
> > > If pointing out the
> > > singletonhood is important, it is proper to have to add the inner
> > > {pa}
> >
> >No, for reason 3 in particular
>
> I meant "pointing out the instrinsic singletonhood". I do want
> an article just for singletons (I use {le} for that) but I don't
> want to have to work out whether my description is fine enough
> that it necessarily corresponds to a singleton: I don't want to
> have to choose one gadri for "my hand" and a different one
> for "my nose" or "my left hand". If I understood you correctly
> you would say {le'e mi xance} vs. {lo'e mi zunle xance}, because
> "my hand" corresponds to an in-mind singleton but "my left hand"
> corresponds to a real-world singleton. I don't think this
> distinction deserves to be obligatory
A good point. How about provisionally calling this {pa'ei}...
It differs from {le pa} in not implicating the inapplicability
of {lo pa}.
I'm very delighted, by the way, that my campaign to undo the
anti-'malglico' prejudice against Number is gaining ground. The
concept of malglico is more often pernicious than beneficial.
> > > {lau} would make sense as a singular gadri in my opinion
> > > only if it was also +specific, so that you could also use it
> > > for singleton in-mind sets
> >
> >But le'e is completely satisfactory for this job, except perhaps
> >in its disyllabicity, which is really a symptom of a much more
> >pervasive problem
>
> Yes. I would use {le'e} for all singletons if it was a single
> syllable, including intrinsic singletons. That's where we still
> differ. I don't see the advantage of separating in-mind
> singletons from intrinsic singletons, unless it is somehow
> important in a particular case to claim that the thing I'm
> referring to is the only thing I could be referring to with
> the description I happen to be using
I think it is very useful to be able to distinguish le'e/lei'e on
the one hand from lo'e/loi'e and {lo pa} on the other. The latter
says that the description alone is sufficient to identify the
referent, while former says that the description alone is not
sufficient to identify the referent. But I accept also that there
is a need for pa'ei, which says that the description may or may
not be sufficient to identify the referent.
(Regarding Adam's lau'au, I now think that it is not usefully
different from lo pa (= lo'e pa = loi pa), so I don't support
it.)
It seems to me that if the baseline offers no way to assign the
shortest cmavo to the most frequently needed cmavo, then that
counts as serious brokenness, because we know that people are
not prepared to pay the price of longwindedness to say exactly
what they mean, when they can say something different from what
they really mean but shorter and can still be perfectly well
understood (by a community of other speakers who all do likewise).
This is such a serious problem that I am loath to propose ad hoc
piecemeal solutions. But one ad hoc piecemeal solution might be
to define bare {le} as equivalent to {pa'ei}, and replace old
{le} by an experimental, {ru'oi} (< ro le su'o). {le} with an
inner or outer quantifier would keep its old meaning. For those
fazed by the irregularity could avoid using {le} with an inner
or outer quantifier and use {ru'oi} instead.
This is definitely against the spirit of the baseline, but in its
defence it is also a place where I feel strongly that the baseline
is broken.
--And.