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On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> (Of course, this is disingenuous, because the typical box (mode) is of
> course brown --- cardboard. Should have stuck with home cities of
> Americans.)
I think that by not seizing the liferaft {of interpreting lo'e as either
mode or median}, but allowing ambiguity between the two, you've doomed
yourself to the riptides of eternal jboske.
> >> The "fill in a blank here" box does have a colour; it's just
> >> unspecified and uninstantiated. There's no na'i about it.
> > Very interesting use of {kau}! Can you explain the {nai} there?
> > I would have just used {makau} for "whatever colour".
>
> kaunai means that the value is not known, and not instantiated; but is
> known to exist and be unique {da}. Is it odd to use {kau} like that?
> When we say {da kau go'i}, we say that the value is known and is
> instantiated, but just isn't communicated. When you're asking for a box,
> you know that whatever box satisfies the request will be a specific,
> concrete box, and so will have a colour. What colour that will be, noone
> knows yet; it is, after all, intensionally defined. When you know who
> killed the butler (kauja'ai), OTOH, there's nothing intensional and
> fluffy there: the killer of the butler has a denotation known to at
> least one person.
Watch it! You're trying to give kau a sane and consistent meaning. Which,
of course, collides with the way Jorge and his disciples use it. For
instance, in that case, makau would mean "I know the value, but I want you
to tell me anyway".
--
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.