Re: TECH HARANGUE: LE/LO

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Jorge:
> I agree with And's explanation of le/lo, I disagree with how
> he resolves this potential ambiguity:
> > (In {Koa krici leduu le broda cu brode} there is an ambiguity,
> > as to who knows which thing it is that koa believes to be a brode
> > - it may be either me, the speaker, or koa. There are ways to rephrase
> > in order to force the reading that it's me who knows, so the default
> > interpretation of the above example should be that it is koa who
> > knows.)
> The default should be the speaker, because it is not ko'a who is using
> the language. Koha might not even speak Lojban and it still be true
> that ko'a krici ledu'u le broda cu brode.

I don't see why it matters who is using the language. Even the speaker
may have been not using Lojban (if the text is translated). If there is
an ambiguity, it is in who knows the identity of the thing that is a
brode - who knows who brodes.

> To refer to Koha's use of {le broda} you can say {ko'a krici la'e
> lu le broda cu brode li'u}.

I don't see how this helps. To me, lae lu le broda cu brode li'u is an
incomplete bridi (incomplete because a referent must be assigned to
lu le broda liu). Maybe to you, lae lu le broda cu brode li'u is a
complete proposition, with a referent assigned to lu le broda liu,
but in this case, we must know which lu le broda cu brode li'u the
speaker is talking about, and it is quite possible that there has
never been any utterance expressing a bridi that corresponds to what
koa believes.

There must be standard answers to this problem, well known to, e.g.
pc & John, concerning examples about knowing whether pole stars are
evening stars, Cicero is Tully, Oedipus's wife is his mother, etc etc.

God forbid I should restart the opacity debate.

---
And