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Nick:
> cu'u la .and
> >Nick:
> >> I assume that {kau} always implies {djuno} or
> >> something like that somewhere along the line,
> >We had assembled a testcase corpus of non-djuno-based 'indirect
> >questions'
>
> I'm very happy you did assemble these, because that's how the
> relevance of this discussion gets proven. That said, are all of these
> really that problematic? As you yourself admit, they needn't all take
> {kau}. So:
>
> >What the last digit of my phone number is has changed
>
> Is this different from "the last digit of my phone number has
> changed"? I don't see how right now
No, but plain NPs can behave semantically like interrogatives
-- "She asked the time", "He knows my phone number" (= whatever
my phone number is, he knows that it be-phonenumbers me).
Change example to: "Who my favourite actor is has changed", and
you can see we are dealing with an interrogative clause.
> >What I eat depends on what's in the fridge
>
> i have a vague recollection that I saw this once, and that the
> question "isn't this just a headless relative clause" has already
> been raised.
In case you mean to reraise it, we can show that it is an
interrogative, e.g.
Who we invite depends on who is likely to be available.
What the fuck I eat depends on what the fuck's in the fridge.
!She took a helping of what the fuck I was eating.
!She invited who was available.
i.e. there are syntactic tests for free relative clauses.
> I think this one's got me: it's instantiation, and it's
> not clearly related to cognition (whereas Jorge's counterexamples of
> forgetting and deciding were.) So I can't immediately see how {djuno}
> resolves this. {kau} is intuitively appealing here; I don't know yet
> whether it's right. I'm fairly sure we can't cut the Gordian knot
> here, though, and say {le se citka be mi....} This isn't a claim
> about food, but about a particular instantiation of food fitting in a
> predication
Is the question "How to say it in Lojban" or "How to say it with
kau" or "What is the logical form if it is said with makau"?
If the first, then I'll join in. If either of the latter two, I'll
just carp from the sidelines!
> >John differs from Jane in how tall they are
>
> This is akin to "John exceeds Jane in how tall they are", which is
> resolved as {la djan. zmadu la djein. leni ce'u galte}. The problem
> then becomes, of course, what does {ni} mean; but we were going to
> have to resolve this anyway
Change example to:
John differs from Jane in who their favourite actor is.
Jorge does this as {l??? ka/du'u ma kau is fave actor of ce'u}.
Between us, Jorge and I worked out some way of doing it with
du'au and ce'u but no makau, but if that becomes relevant I'll
exacavate that from my archives. I can't face reconstructing it
ab initio.
> But your second example is giving me pause. You may have trapped me.
> Believe me, I'm looking forward to Karttunen's paper on questions
>
> ****
>
> A DEFENCE OF jboske and Formal semantics
>
> I say this as much to convince myself as anyone else, because I find
> these debates frustrating, confusing, and bewildering
>
> But I feel I have to say this more explicitly, because xod's praise
> embarasses me a little.
xod's praise for who and what? I thought xod thinks jboske is trying
to pin down mirages.
> Just because egghead X says something holds
> in the semantics of English, doesn't mean we in Lojban have to buy
> into it. Remember, Carlson may have argued that all bare plurals in
> English, whether generic ("Dogs eat meat") or individuals ("I saw
> dogs"), are the same thing underlyingly; but Carlson's explaining
> English, so he would say that. He's got something to prove, after all
And he may be right for English. That is, it is possible that English
sentences do not encode the generic/nongeneric distinction, and that
that distinction is inferred pragmatically. (a big shudder from John
here)
> It also doesn't mean that the formal semanticists are on the right
> track. Geoff Sampson wrote a sympathetic book review of CLL, as you
> may know (I'm getting someone to type it up for me and will send it
> to list, because people don't seem to know about it.) Well, Sampson
> also wrote a book I glimpsed today, trashing formal semantics so
> thoroughly, I was wondering what the hell I was doing being
> interested in it. Sort of like xod on a good day. :-)
Which book is that?
You also need to consider what criteria dermine the rightness of a
track? Nor for everybody are the criteria cognitive.
> But. But when we work with Lojban, we find some logical notions
> embedded in the language by its designers. They have a history and a
> context; it makes sense to find out what they are, to see if we need
> them and if they help in our understanding of What Lojban Shall Do.
> (This is, obviously, an open question.)
>
> And clearly, And, Jorge and pc know a lot about this background. (And
> that the trade does have many an unresolved debate.) I don't. In
> fact, when I realised I didn't, and that I was speaking about Lojban
> semantics without knowing any formal semantics, I bowed out of
> Lojban. (OK, there was the small matter of my PhD too, but I realised
> I'd been talking crap, and I don't like talking crap.)
>
> And yet this stuff is fun. When it stays clearcut, at least; before
> too long, though, you don't know whether you're coming or going. As
> we're all finding. It's fun on its own, even independent of Lojban; I
> always did want to learn it anyway
The stuff where we talk about meaning and try to work out what a
Lojban sentence means is fun. When it starts to get political and
we argue about which meaning is best for a given cmavo, things
start to get painful, and I long for a way to shortcut the
argument.
> (And the logicians and the philosophers; one of the things Sampson
> trashed the formal semanticists about was that they were doing
> philosophy without talking to the philosophers.)
And sometimes I think the philosophers are doing linguistics without
talking to the linguists!
I enjoyed your message, and I enjoy you being here very much.
--And.