[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: possible readings of "John seeks a bike or a fish"
- Subject: Re: possible readings of "John seeks a bike or a fish"
- Date: 26 May 90 13:44:06 GMT
- >From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee)
- Newsgroups: sci.lang
- Organization: University of Hawaii
- References: <265D4D6F.5886@marob.masa.com>
>From article <265D4D6F.5886@marob.masa.com>, by cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan):
>...
>A discussion on the articles "le" and "lo": In Lojban, a distinction is made
>between veridical and non-veridical description. A veridical description
>claims that the thing described actually exists and meets the description:
>...
In an example with an indefinite and a single scope-taking element,
e.g. "John tries", a two way distinction for nominals suffices, since the
only possibilities are that the indefinite is in or out of one scope.
But what if there are two or more scope-taking items? Then the
indefinite may be in or out of several scopes. What do you do then?
(cf. `Mary doesn't want John to seek a bike.') A two-way, or n-way,
morphological classification of nominals can not in principle express
all the logical distinctions, because they are unbounded in number.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu