Re: context in Lojban

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>]

ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk cisku di'e

    replying to Bob Chassell:
    > ... if the context is that there are a real and a
    > non-real box in front of us, and our contextual range is constrained
    > to those boxes, then
    >
    >     .i mi nitcu lo tanxe
    >
    > is *specific* as to which box, and

    So even if there exists a real box that you do need, but you need neither
    of the boxes in the "contextual range", then the utterance is false
    - according to you. I am incredulous that this really is the official
    line on LO.

Not incredible at all.  Surely, if the box I need is not in the
"contextual range", then it is not `for real'.

The practical reason one must include the "contextual range" with {lo}
is that without it, Jorge is right in calling the veridicality issue
trivial.

On the other hand, when epistemology and context get included, then
you have a tool that is different from other kinds of grammatical
categorization (and I think powerful and important).

My sense of Lojban style is that people will tend to use {lo} and
{loi} more often than {le} or {lei} -- after all, people think of
themselves and others as talking about `reality' (even of unicorns, in
context), and shifting to a context in which you are *designating*
something according the predication that follows the {le} or {lei}
requires effort ---why not talk about the real thing itself?

The categorizers {le} and {lei} lead to metaphor.  Here is a
predication, {le tanxe} (designated as a box, carton, trunk, crate}; I
use it to designate this other thing (a stiff paper bag); this
predication is `not for real' in our usual epistimolgy (the refered to
entity is {lo dakli}), but I am conveying information about a quality
of the designated entity.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725