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Jordan:
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 02:27:56PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > Jordan:
> > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 11:07:17PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > Jordan:
> > > > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 11:33:58AM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > > > > On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Jordan DeLong wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 10:43:29AM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > > > [...]
> > > > > > > This is what is confusing you: You *can't* use da to refer to
> > > > > > > something specific
> > > > > >
> > > > > > We've had this discussion before, and it's where you said
> (da poi gerku
> > > > > > fi'o ponse mi) isn't specific, even if I only have one dog
> > > > >
> > > > > Yup. It isn't. In fact it suggests to the listener that you may
> > > > > own more than one dog
> > > > >
> > > > > It's like if I were to say "lo stedu be mi" instead of "le stedu
> > > > > be mi"
> > > >
> > > > As you know, if I am guided by meaning rather than usage then
> > > > "le stedu be mi", "each of (a) certain head(s) of mine", also
> > > > implies you have more than one head, else why the need for universal
> > > > quantification, and why the need for specificity -- that is, why
> > > > the need to invoke a particular le'i stedu be mi, when you are
> > > > in fact talking about the membership of lo'i stedu be mi?
> > >
> > > I disagree. o-gadri are out, regardless of the membership of lo'i
> > > stedu be mi, because I am talking about a specific thing.
> >
> > Certainly if you intend to refer to a +specific thing, i.e. something
> > involving le'i, then o-gadri are out. But one can speak of someone's
> > head without referring to it
>
> We're talking about refering to it. One ought not to make claims
> about their head without refering to it. Claims without refering
> to it should be limited to claims of its existence
I think we need to concretize which expressions we agree count as
referring, and which are permissible in talking about someone's head.
As things stand, I cannot see why one ought not to make claims about
someone's head without using a +specific or LA gadri or ko'a-series
KOhA, which is how I would tend to interpret the term 'referring
expression'.
> > > lei makes
> > > no sense, because it implies there is more than one,
> >
> > As you know, I think the implication that there is more than one is
> > either less with lei than with le, or else equal
>
> I don't see why you think that
The reason for them being equal is if le is distributive and lei
is collective; the distinction is pertinent only to groups of more
than one.
The reason for lei implicating plurality more weakly is that lei
is itself a reference to a single individual (tho not necessarily
a single broda), while le quantifies over a set of broda. When
I say "the reason", I mean "a reason", because this isn't a
matter of right and wrong.
> > > and furthermore
> > > that collectively it can be (conceptually) infinitely subdivided
> > > le'i refers to something other than the head. le'e is obviously
> > > wrong, and implies that there is more than one head.
> >
> > le'e is definitely not wrong, since it refers to a single head,
> > or, if you prefer, *the* single head. Some but not all opinions
> > on the generic gadri (but not the Prototype view) imply that the
> > membership is nonsingleton, but I can't see how the implication
> > would be stronger than with other gadri
>
> The whole point with le'e/lo'e is taking a representative, imaginary
> instance of the whole set.
As you know, we don't agree on this. I don't agree that the instance
need be representative or imaginary. It can be real, but it must be
the only member. If under the operative worldview it cannot be true
that there is only one real member, then the one member must be
imaginary. Even then, it needn't be representative if there is a
sensical way to reduce a manymembered set to a single nonrepresentative
member, though it may in fact be the case that representativeness is
inherent in the process of singularization.
> If there's only one member of le'i
> broda, then "le broda" is the representative member by definition
As is lei.
> Saying le'e implies that there's more than one which you need to
> look around
One one view of le'e, yes. But not on every candidate view. As I
said in the message you are replying to.
> > > "le" is the correct gadri
> >
> > None of the gadri are incorrect. It is a matter of which one has
> > the least unfortunate implications. I won't repeat all the arguments
> > all over again, because they're in earlier messages and on the wiki
> > Personally, for {stedu be mi} I would use {loi'e}, or {lo'e} if
> > that is equivalent to {loi'e}
>
> But you (by your own admission with those stats on the wiki) use
> lo'e for basically everything. It makes no sense to me. Esp
> since we already ruled out o-gadri
I take "lo'e broda" to mean "the one and only broda", with the
"one and only" bit presupposed rather than asserted. In the light
of that, it will be obvious why it gets used so often.
I'm not sure what you mean by "we already ruled out o-gadri". Any
gadri (apart from lV'i) yields truth when talking of a singleton
category. The disagreement is about which gadri most strongly
implicates that the category is not singleton. If we had gadri
that actually encoded singletonness (in paradigmatic contrast
with the other gadri) without any element of genericity,
then we wouldn't have to be having this debate.
--And.