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The contention: that "any-x" and Intensional/opaque readings
readings reduce to quantification within the scope of some
world-straddling predicate; or, that Any-x and Intensional
readings can be captured without the use of intensional gadri.
1. It is obvious how propositionalism handles wanting and
needing. (But more below on {nu}.)
2. Treat seeking as trying to find.
3. Depicting (e.g. "This depicts a snake"). As Nick suggests,
we can treat this as "There is something that in some world
(not necessarily the local world) is a snake and that in the
local world this depicts".
There was already a need for a way to do this in Lojban,
so that we could talk about imaginaries such as Sherlock Holmes
without having to abandon the distinction between the local world
and worlds that from the perspective of the local world are
fictional. The two ways that have been proposed for doing this
are {da'i} and {ka'e}/{nu'o}. Both are unsatisfactory for two
reasons. The first reason is that they mean, or should mean,
something else. {ka'e}/{nu'o} pertain to Possible Worlds. {da'i}
is in UI and therefore has something to do with illocutionary
meaning. The second reason is that they don't allow us to
distinguish "For every x there is some world w such that in w
x is broda" and "There is some world w and for every x that in
w is broda". For example, "For every Danish mermaid, I will
write a poem about her", normally wouldn't mean I will write
an infinite number of poems, one for every imaginable Danish
mermaid.
What we need is a selbri, "x is world of which y is true".
It could be a lujvo, but I'll define a NU, {jei'u}, to do
the job: "x1 is a world of which the abstraction is true".
This then gives us:
da ro de poi da je'u de is Danish mermaid zo'u I will write
a poem about de
And for "This depicts three snakes":
da zo'u ti pixra ci poi'i da jei'u ke'a since
This solution is not always satisfactory, though. Consider:
This branch has the shape of three intertwined snakes.
It is not enough to say there are in some world three snakes
that have the shape of this branch. That statement would presumably
be true whatever the shape of the branch. Similar examples:
This is the colour of bananas.
This is banana-coloured.
This is banana-shaped.
This resembles a phoenix egg.
This is phoenix-egg-like.
For these, I don't see any propositionalist alternative to the idea
behind lo'ei/le'ei/la'ei gadri, which I think can be rendered as:
lo-: (tu'o) le pa du be ro ((lu'a) lo'i) broda
le-: (tu'o) le pa du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
la-: (tu'o) le pa du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda
Hence:
This branch has the shape of (tu'o) le pa du be ro lo ci mei be fi lo
since.
This resembles (tu'o) le pa du be ro phoenix egg.
4. Psych-predicates.
"John reveres the authors of the American constitution but John
doesn't know who authored the American constitution."
"Lex Luther is afraid of Superman but Lex Luther is not afraid
of Clark Kent."
-- these can be true on one reading, which can be captured by:
reverence cei broda zo'u broda-inspiring cei brode zo'u
John feels broda in response to believing that everyone who
authored the American constitution is brode
fear cei broda zo'u broda-inspiring cei brode zo'u
Lex Luther feels broda in response to believing that everyone
who is Superman is brode
There aren't a kludge, because psych-predicates do involve
propositional content plus emotional response. They can be
lexicalized as:
John -reveres LEka me ce'u fa ro author of the American constitution
Lex Luther -fears LEka me ce'u ro me LA superman
or, for short:
John -reveres tu'a ro author of the American constitution
Lex Luther -fears tu'a (ro me) LA superman
5. "mi djica LEnu broda" means "I want that LEnu broda be actual (be
fasnu)". But which nu broda? -- *Any* one nu broda. How do we
express this? There is no propositionalist solution. One solution
is to kill quantification by singularizing nu broda (e.g. by
{piroloinu}. A better solution is to use a predicate that means
"I want that p be true", which has the benefit of allowing nu to
behave like all other predicates in having an extension that varies
from world to world. Thus: "mi -wants LEdu'u broda".
--And.