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--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@...> wrote:
>
> On 9/25/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@...> wrote:
> > --- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Yes. For definiteness, let's consider a simple model:
> > >
> > > The universe of discourse is a set with three elements:
> > > U={John, unicorns, elephants}.
> >
> > I assume you mean "unicorn" and "elephant", otherwise there would be
> > more than three things in the universe.
>
> Well, English is not the ideal metalanguage for Lojban, because of its
> obligatory number marking. But the sentence "There are three things
> in the domain of discourse: namely unicorns, elephants and John" is
> perfectly normal English, as far as I understand. The English plural
form
> is not infrequently used with a single referent. Maybe if we could use
> Chinese (or even Lojban) as our metalanguage this issue wouldn't even
> arise. Unfortunately, I don't speak any Chinese.
Me neither. I would take "unicorns" as one thing to be part of a joke
(as here) or as some sort of dialect form (and that usually as part of
a joke).
> > You seem to be serious with this rather bad joke, so please explain
> > how "unicorns" can be singular other than as a typo. I agree that if
> > someone says {lo pavyseljirna} in a primary place, I take it that
> > there is at least one unicorn in his universe and adjust the universe
> > I am constructing accordingly (or get him to readjust his). But this
> > does not say anything about the critters John wants: in your mini
> > universe, John could want a hippopotamus or a centaur without changing
> > anything.
>
> John could want those things in addition to wanting unicorns, but if
he doesn't
> want unicorns, then the model constructed in the discourse, which
includes
> {la djan cu djica lo pavyseljirna} as one of its true sentences,
would not be a
> very good model (even if internally self-consistent).
I wasn't saing that he does not want unicorns, only that he can want
things other than unicorns, things that do not appear in the
universe.So, indeed, he could want unicorns in a model which contained
only John and a bunch of elephants. (He could alsosay truthfully in
this smaller model that unicorns do not exist -- indeed that there are
no unicorns.)