Re: Cowan's summary: opacity and sumti-raising

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> > The degenerate case "I'm looking for my book (+specific)"
> 
> Why degenerate? I often find myself looking for things that I forgot where
> I left. I don't see what is so exceptional about this circumstance.

It is admittedly a common case, but it is not the general case.

> > becomes "I'm looking
> > for something with the property of being my book", i.e.
> >
> >         mi sisku le ka du le mi cukta
> 
> Why add this {le ka du}, when the unmarked case would naturally mean that?
> Very unzipfist.

It's natural for "seek", but "sisku" is something different.

> >         mi sisku tu'a le mi cukta
> 
> Which could also mean "I'm looking for something to write on my book" or
> any of a million other things related to my book. It is vague

If you don't like vagueness, use "le ka du".  Only one syllable longer than
"tu'a", and perfectly precise.  Precision and verbosity are in inverse
proportion, as usual.

> > However, if we say "I'm looking for an English translation of Jorge de
> > Montemayor's >Diana<", the "le ka" formulation saves us from error even
> > if there is no such translation.
> 
> Here I would use {lo'e}:
> 
>         mi sisku lo'e xe fanva be la'o sy Diana sy bei la gliban
> 
> 
> {lo'e broda} doesn't claim that {lo broda} exists, does it?

I don't know that that has been settled.  But I find the idea of an
archetype of a non-existent (in the appropriate universe of discourse) thing
rather problematic.  What could be predicated of this {lo'e xe fanva}, other
than what we say in the embedded place structures?

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.