addendum to 8 versions of an English sentence by John Cowna

[wetblu!uunet!cbmvax...@digitalkingdom.org]

after running one of the trickier samples by Nora, and checking the intended
interpretation with John C. I want to revise one thing said in my last on this
topic.
The sentence "John seeks a bicycle or a fish"
meaning John seeks either a bicycle or a fish, and will be sataisfied
with whatever he finds is translated best with the logical connective
-either between sumti (preferred) or between clauses. As I said in the
last msg, all logical connective expressionsdiffering only in where the
connective is are going to mean the same thing.
Thus
la djan cu sisku lo relxi'uma'e .a le finpe
and
la djan cu sisku lo relxi'uma'e gi'a sisku le finpe
mean the same thing.
The case John was trying to represent with the latter is the one meaning:
"John seeks a bicycle or a fish - but I the observer don't know which."
has a more complex logical structure and can be represented by the following:
da relxi'uma'e gi'a finpe gi'e se sisku la djan.
(something is a bycle or a fish, and is sought by John)
Note that there are two logical connectives in this version, and that Lojban
connectives are left grouping unless marked.

hope this confuses the issue enough for everyone
--lojbab

[John Cowan]

lojbab writes:
> "John seeks a bicycle or a fish - but I the observer don't know which."
> has a more complex logical structure and can be represented by the following:
> da relxi'uma'e gi'a finpe gi'e se sisku la djan.
> (something is a bycle or a fish, and is sought by John)
> Note that there are two logical connectives in this version, and that Lojban
> connectives are left grouping unless marked.

Now that I grasp this point, how about this version:
la djan. sisku da poi relxi'uma'e gi'a finpe
meaning
John seeks something which is-a-bicycle or is-a-fish.

This seems to me to be correct and also to capture the desired sense.

--
co...@marob.masa.com (aka ...!hombre!marob!cowan)
e'osai ko sarji la lojban

[wetblu!uunet!cbmvax...@digitalkingdom.org]

Your new attempt is grammatical, and may be OK, but it may have different
effects with respect to logical quantification. Since we talked, I checked
with pc, and he says that the problems of intensional predicates lies in
what logical operations can be performed on them, in particular the
exporting of quantifiers to a prenex. The subject is apparently intensely
complicated, and we will no doubt have to have refined rules for allowed
manipulations for these predicates.
pc will be thinking about the problem between now and LogFest, and I don't
expect any bright ideas before then.
-lojbab