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Re: [jboske] Dr. Rosta's comments on my gadri whitepaper



xod:
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, And Rosta wrote:
> > Nonspecific is a linguistics term, not part of XS. If you're using it
with
> > a definition of your own, better to choose a different term. "Somebody"
is
> > nonspecific in "I'm sure somebody loves me" = "I'm sure that it's not
the
> > case that nobody loves me" = "I'm sure there is somebody that loves me".
> > But it's not Any.
>
> What are the differences? "Anybody loves me" sounds weird in English, but
> we must try not to be misled by the artifacts of that barbaric language. I
> am always uneasy about using English for these discussions. "I'm sure
> somebody loves me"  = "I am sure that [at least] ANY one of those people
> out there love me."

Certainly nonspecific "One person loves me" is true iff any one person is
such that they love me. But "I want a book (to prop open the door)" can
be true even if it is not the case that any one book is such that I want
it (in order to prop open the door). But it is true if I want things to
be as they would be if any one book was at hand to prop open the door.

The point I'm trying to make is this:
* 'nonspecific' can be paraphrased by 'any'.
* English 'any' is a narrow scope nonspecific. (= Within the scope of
irrealis, negation, intensionality, whatever.) (Sometimes it seems to
be a wide-scope 'every' instead, but that needn't concern us here.) In
other words, English 'any' means 'a'/'some', but can only be used in
grammatical environments where it is within the scope of an irrealis
(etc.) element.
* What we called the 'Any' reading of nitcu etc. is when the nonspecific
is within the scope of the needing (i.e. "I need that there be a doctor",
as opposed to "There is a doctor that I need there to be").
* You could define the term 'Any' to be equivalent to Nonspecific, but
in that case we do have a way to express your Any -- ordinary {pa (lo)
broda} -- but we have no way to say "I need that there be a doctor".

--And.