real vs. nominal anaphora

[cowan (John Cowan)]

I think the difference between Lojban's "real" (call-by-name) and Carter's
"nominal" (call-by-value) interpretation of anaphora binding is precisely
what to do in the presence of "ra'o" (which is a suffix, BTW).

I also think the word "referent" is being used in two different ways:
is the "referent" of an anaphor the words to which it is equivalent, or 
the non-verbal things to which those words supposedly refer?  Henceforth,
I will use "referent" only in the latter sense, and introduce the term
"equivalent" for the former sense.  E.g., in this message "I" is equivalent
to "John Cowan", and both "I" and "John Cowan" have as referent John Cowan,
the person.

In Carter's scheme of things, all anaphora are immediately replaced by their
equivalents, and the actual anaphora are thereafter unrecoverable.
Thus conversations like:
	mi'e djan. mi citka lemi cidja
	I-am John; I eat my food.
	mi'e djim. go'i ra'o
	I-am Jim; I do too.

are not possible, because "mi citka lemi cidja" has already been rewritten
as "la djan. citka le la djan. cidja".

Now the Lojban interpretation is not that anaphora are replaced by their
referents: that would be impossible.  A referent is extra-linguistic,
and cannot be placed in a sentence.  "Boston" refers to Boston, but cannot
be replaced by Boston, because the city of Boston cannot go into a sentence!
Sentences are composed only of words, not of words and other objects.

Instead, the interpretation is that anaphora are left alone but supplemented
by a "binding environment" which maps the anaphor onto its equivalent.
Then, if the sentence containing the anaphor is "called up" by another
anaphor, the binding environment may be used (normally) or ignored (if
"ra'o" is suffixed).

This binding environment is exactly like the one used by Common Lisp,
except that it is possible to decide from outside, as it were, whether to
use it or ignore it (causing dynamic binding instead, where the anaphor-to-
equivalent mapping is made again in the local binding environment).