Re: le/lo

[John Cowan <cowan@DRV.CBC.COM>]

la .and. cusku di'e

> > That part of the cmavo list has not been updated since the discovery
> > of the "specificity" category, but "le" has always been used for
> > specific things.  Because of the specificity, the truthful
> > applicability of the referential predicate has become logically
> > irrelevant, as in my example above (which does not mean that it
> > is pragmatically useless).
>
> I may have misunderstood you, but in the case of specific referents,
> nonveridicality is useful in identifying definite referents (i.e.
> in identifying the referent to the addressee), but one still
> of course wishes to predicate things veridically of specific
> referents. I wouldn't agree that the veridicality of any
> predicate is logically irrelevant.

Nor would I.  By "referential predicate" I meant the (syntactic)
predicate within the *le*-description.

It is irrelevant to the truth value of "le cinfo cu blanu" whether
the referent of "le cinfo" really is a lion, but it is most certainly
relevant whether the referent really is blue.  For "lo cinfo cu blanu",
the referent must be both a lion and blue for the bridi to be true.
This is the distinction which is captured by the term "veridical".

> > a)      le -discussion cu du lo -quagmire
> > b)      le -discussion cu du le -quagmire
> >
> > where (a) says that this discussion is identical with some actual
> > quagmire (false), and (b) says that this discussion is
> > identical with some specific thing I describe as a quagmire
> > (not provably false, but bizarre).
>
> I don't see why (b) is bizarre. It seems perfectly OK to me.

On reflection, I agree.

> > "le co'e" is really "da" with a hint about the
> > referent.
>
> I don't think I'd buy that.

You are right, of course.  That was a brain fart.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban