Re: To be or not to be? Coffee or tea?

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

>         do djica tu'a loi ckafi ji loi tcati
> 
> [In the draft grammar, djica is used without tu'a in several places.
> Is this sumti raising?]

Usually.  In the connectives paper, all examples are sumti-raising and have
been fixed.  In the places paper, all examples are sumti-raising and have
been changed to use "viska".  In the text structure paper, 7.8 is
a deliberately vague topic-comment sentence and has been left alone.
I have added a note about hidden sumti-raising.

> Now, suppose I want to respond "either". If I say {.a}, I'm only
> saying that I want at least one of them, but I'm not saying which.
> How do I say that I want either? I would say {du'ibo}, but that's
> not grammatical yet.

I don't understand the distinction you are making here.  If you wish to
avoid the possibility of getting both, use ".onai".

> And to add some confusion, consider
> 
>         mi djica le nu do pinxe loi ckafi .a loi tcati
> 
> which expands to
> 
>         mi djica le nu do pinxe loi ckafi gi'a pinxe loi tcati
> 
> Does it further expand to
> 
>     mi djica le nu do pinxe loi ckafi kei .a le nu do pinxe loi tcati
> 
> ?

No, no, a thousand times no!  Logical connectives can't expand out of
abstractions, which are referentially opaque:

	mi jinvi le du'u loi jmive zvati gi'onai na zvati la .iupiter.
	I opine the-fact-that a-mass-of living-things is-at or-else isn't-at Jupiter

is true, since the embedded sentence is a tautology, but:

	mi jinvi le du'u loi jmive zvati la .iupiter.
	.ijonai mi jinvi le du'u loi jmive zvati la .iupiter.
	I opine the-fact-that a-mass-of living-things is-at Jupiter,
	or-else I opine the-fact-that a-mass-of living-things isn't-at Jupiter.

is false, since I have no evidence one way or the other ("jinvi" requires some
sort of evidence, real or fancied, unlike "krici").  This example will be moved
to the connectives paper in Section 19.

> At first sight they seem equivalent, but...
> 
> The first one means that I want that you drink at least one of them,
> but I don't have to want that you drink one in particular. In the second
> one, I have to want that you drink one in particular.

Quite right.

> I hope what I wrote makes any sense to someone.

Indeed.


-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.