Wiki page How to use xorlo changed
wrote:
> Still working on the strange use of "refer"
> that
> seems to play some role here, is the following
> reasnably correct:
>
> If I say {mu lo bakni} twice, the sentences
> involved might be made true by two (at least
> partially) different bunches of cows. In
> neither
> case are the cows referred to.
>
> If I want to be sure that it is the same bunch
> of
> cows the second time, I should use {lo mu lo
> bakni} which assures that the reference in the
> second case is to the cows that made the first
> case true (but which were not there referred
> to).
>
> If I use {lo mu lo bakni} in the first case I
> not
> only claim that there are exactly five cows
> that
> make the sentence involved true but I also
> refer
> to them.
>
> I am still unclear about why {mu lo bakni} does
> not refer to the the cows. I am not even clear
> why {Q da} doesn't refer to what makes the
> sentence true, labeit without giving a lot of
> information about them — but that is not
> required for reference. I suppose this is just
> definitional at some level, but it seems to be
> making a difference and to be somehow involved
> a
> justification for some of the innovations that
> you are foisting on Lojban.
<<hit the wrong damned button!>>
In my mind the fact that I can meaningfully talk
about picking out even pragmatically the the five
cows that made the earlier sentence true means
that they have already been introduced into the
context and I am unclear how that is done if not
by reference: they are the values of the
variables (if you insist that there are variables
in this case) in the first reference as they are
the values of {lo mu lo bakni} in the second
(Actually, of course, it is the bunch of them
that is the value in each case, or if you want to
insist that {mu lo bakni} is really {mu da poi
bakni}, quite independent of whatever {lo bakni}
refers to, the the second refers to the bunch of
those cows referred to eventually in the first.I
assume we are not yet doing plural
interpretations)
As I said somehwere earlier, we are constructing
the model as we go here and so what we bring with
sumti of any sort go into the model as the
reality end of the reference function. If I can
tell that there are five, I can tell which ones
they are in a sufficient way — though maybe in
only a rather a rather vague. I can, however,
know whether it is the same five involved at the
next stage.