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Monty's unicorns



I've just got to the bit where Dowty explains how Montague does de dicto in seeking unicorns.

Properties of properties? Using the individual sublimation = haeccity to distinguish intensional from extensional verbs? Lojban can never do this. I'd much rather Quine. Even if Quine doesn't work.

I'm going to try to sully Monty by inserting lambdas for worlds and times and killing the intensions, and putting in Lojbans numeric quantifiers rather than the pure sets of properties, and see if I can get anything intelligible out of it.

But before I go on, who here is familiar with Monty's scheme?

I gotta say, this has been disspiriting. Intensions made the Quinean embedded quantifications looks so square, and were so much more flexible. But I cannot use properties of properties and existential and individual sublimations; they may work with the utmost of serendipity for Monty's mapping from English to Lambda calculus, but they twist your head right off...

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Dr Nick Nicholas. French/Italian,  "Rode like foam on the river of pity
University of Melbourne             Turned its tide to strength
http://www.opoudjis.net Healed the hole that ripped in living"
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