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You guys really did prematurely declare victory.The point of this intensional x, as in "I'm looking for a doctor", or "I want to talk to a doctor" (Quine's transparent vs. opaque readings) are that, if the doctor is lx.doctor(x), you don't want *anything* else predicated of the doctor. The most atypical doctor in the world can satisfy that requirement.
And that isn't what lo'e is defined as, dammit. lo'e is defined as 'typical'.Even prototypical won't do, and And is being silly if he claims it does. Under no understanding of birds are penguins typical or even prototypical birds. Yet, if you're looking for a bird, and find a penguin, then you're satisfied.
So it now looks to me that, if we resolved "I'm looking for a doctor" in Lojban as {mi sisku leka ce'u mikce}, then we should resolve this intensional article with {ka}, as something like {le jai ka ce'u mikce} (or {se ka}, or whatever.) And if this discussion were not so utterly free form, I'd be able to find where someone had an objection to that.
But this is not lo'e. lo'e does make extra predications of its referent, based on representativeness. If you're trying to shoehorn the intensional generic into it, kindly don't. It is something else.
That is to say, I am willing for lo'e to be neutral between prototype and typical (And's lo'e). I am not willing for lo'e to be neutral between representative singularisation and intensional generic (Jorge's lo'e). And I think it a matter of some priority that we find an acceptable way of expressing the intensional generic --- without a gadri necessarily being the way to do it.
To bring this back to the planet Earth, btw, the intensional "a doctor" means "any doctor".That's what I'll have to base any paedagogy around.
Am working through Carlson's paper on the Bare English Plural. He sidesteps the generic/individual distinction by making it contingent on the tense, and has a theory of different selves to cope with {ta'e}. I don't know if I like it, but it is helping me to see where people are coming from with their arguments...
-- **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies nickn@hidden.email * University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****