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On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 05:27:17PM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Dec 2002, John Cowan wrote:
> > Invent Yourself scripsit:
> > > I say by not specifying what sort of doctor he needs, or even indicating
> > > that there are unspoken in-mind restriction conditions, he is asking for
> > > any doctor.
> >
> > You might as well say that "lo xirma cu blabi" means "Any horse is white".
> > It doesn't and that's that.
>
> One might interpret this as "There is at least 1 horse that's white", the
That is the proper interpretation.
Remember lo xirma == da poi xirma.
> sort of statement one might make after observing a white horse. But after
> observing one, the speaker has that white horse in mind, and should use
> "le", not "lo". So I'm still waiting for a refutation of my idea that
> {-specific} ranges over the whole set, can refer to any member of the set,
> and in this case translates close to this English sense of "any". (There
> could be some other sense of "any" that's causing grief.)
Right, but let's say you've seen a bunch of horses. Some white,
some black, some purple with pink polka dots. Then someone claims
there's no such thing as white horses
no xirma cu blabi
and you feel compelled to defend that there are some
.i je'u lo xirma cu blabi
"le" would be incorrect---the listener would respond with "le ki'a
xirma" (what horse?). (You could also say "loi xirma cu blabi" for
this btw, but that's neither here nor there).
It definitely doesn't do "any". I think "loi" probably can
though---the "sundry unattached body parts" objections people have
raised don't break it because of grice. "I need any white horse"
== "mi nitcu loi blabi xirma".
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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