nitcu

["John E. Clifford" <Pycyn@AOL.COM>]

(aol is back to screwing around with addresses again, so I'll try with the
handwritten rather than the automatic after today's bounce note.)

Lojbab has passed this one on to me, the negationwallah.  But I --
anticipating the new book which I then have not yet ordered -- have put my
old stuff in some deep hole.  So I do not have a copy of the gismu list and
other crucial references in front of me.  Therefore, take what I say as
tentative at the kindest.

My recollection is that *nitcu* "normally" takes  event descriptions in both
places 2 and 3 and that other references -- to things -- occur in place 2
only with subject raising (tu'a?).  In addition, "need" constructions are
already special in English, since they often involve both raising and
revealing the rest of the old buried sentence: in "I need a hammer to pound
the nail" both objects come from "I pound the nail with a hammer" (more or
less).

So part of the solution here is divvying up the sources of the pieces.  I
suppose that "I don't need a lumberjack to pour my milk" (the first reading
-- this is ambiguous, inevitably) is "I don't need a lumberjack for to pour
my milk" against  "I don't need for a lumberjack to pour my milk" = "I don't
need that a lumberjack pour my milk in order that that my milk is poured"  v
"I don't need that a lumberjack pour my milk at all."  That is, in the first
the two object places are filled by the same event description, except that
one has "lumberjack" as subject, the other has an indefinite subject (or is
passivized or some such).  The second reading is the normal one for "I don't
need a dinosaur to eat me up,"  that is, this seems to be an event that is
not needed for any purpose whatever -- one could go on to saying that it is
rejected for all purposes (or its negated form is needed for every purpose).
 So, the second form has "A dinosaur eats me up" as the source for the second
place and the third place is left unspecified (defaulting in negations in
Lojban to internal particular?).

This does not say squat about negations, but does sort out the cited cases a
bit.  In this context, the negation questions are probably going to be the
often debated ones about scope.

The "I don't need a hammer to attach these papers" case does have an easy
answer, though I can't remember the vocab for it: "I need not a hammer ..."
 where the "not a" is a term negation that explicitly means "something other
than."

>|83 pc