Re: GLI Re: Indirect questions

[JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

And:
 >But my main objection is that the "inherent meaning" is determinate
>and the "noninherent meaning" is indeterminate.

But what's indeterminate about the meaning under discussion?
Given a context in which the utterance is produced, it will either
be the case that she is sad, or it will be the case that she isn't.
(Or some other value in the middle.) Now, given that context,
it is perfectly determinate what is {le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri}.
Any {lu ... li'u} that serves to report the fact will do.

>In English one often gets exchanges like:
>
>  A: What are you complaining about? You *asked* me to open the
>     window.
>  B: No I didn't. I just said it was warm in here.
>
>  A: I've known women be better at maths than men.
>  B: I strongly disagree that women are better at maths than men.
>
>- based on misunderstandings, which in turn arise from an erroneous
>inference of noninherent meaning from inherent meaning.

All right, that's not what I had in mind. I meant unequivocal meanings.
Noninherent only in as much as they depend on the context. Somewhat
like deictics.

>Lojban's
>cultural literalism is well-advised, and I think the distinction
>should be carried over to the meaning of {la`e}.

I agree. I'm not suggesting a deviation from literalism here.

>> To those worried about the horribly arcane nature of this discussion,
>> we are trying to decide whether {le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri} makes
>> sense, as in {mi cusku le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri}, which to me
>> means "I say whether she is sad".
>
>My position is that I don't see how it makes sense if we simply
>extrapolate from known cases. But that does not rule out declaring
>this a valid usage.

I understand {mi cusku le sedu'u ...} to mean what {mi cusku le du'u ...}
would mean if cusku meant  "x1 says proposition x2". Am I committing
some blunder that I don't see here?

...
>The price of having the unexpanded forms is that they don't
>all expand in the same way. If we required all expansions to
>be automatic (i.e. insensitive to lexical semantics) then
>either {djuno} or {kucli} could not have their current meaning.

Yes, it would seem that you're right.

co'o mi'e xorxes