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Re: [jboske] propositionalism redux




la and cusku di'e

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.

My gut reaction to propositionalism is that it may be correct
in the sense that it satisfactorily accounts for the
underlying meaning of what we want to express, but that
it is wrong in the sense that it is not the way I want
to express myself.

  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

These examples make me want to define a new cmavo
{loi'ei} = {lo poi'i da jei'u ke'a} (with an implicit {su'o da}
somewhere in the prenex), so that they become:

   mi ba te pemci ro loi'ei danko fipni'u

   ti pixra ci loi'ei 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.

I'm not sure I see the difference between a picture
depicting three snakes and a branch resembling three
snakes. Wouldn't the picture statement too be true whatever
the picture? For that matter, couldn't we say that for
every poem there is some world in which its subject
matter is a Danish mermaid? Maybe we need some implicit
restriction on worlds.

4. Psych-predicates.

  "Lex Luther is afraid of Superman but Lex Luther is not afraid
  of Clark Kent."
[...]
  Lex Luther -fears LEka me ce'u ro me LA superman

But this -fears is not the same ordinary {terpa}, unless
terpa is polysemous. It is what I called {kairterpa}.

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".

I agree that this is the predicate we would want for
propositionalism to work. I also agree that nu should be
an ordinary predicate, so that ro nu broda cu fasnu.
But for the same reason I don't want properties as x2
of sisku or terpa, I don't want du'u as the x2 of djica.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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