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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.