WikiDiscuss

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> xorxes:
> > I think the same possibilities exist for pixra:
> > a) A picture of a doctor (Dr Smith)
> > b) A picture of a doctor (no one in particular)
> > c) A picture of a doctor (a cardiologist)
> > d) A picture of a doctor (no speciality in particular)
>
> Yes, (a-d) are possibilities. But (a) has a further ambiguity according
> to whether the doctor exists in the same world as the picture.

In that case, all four of them could be ambiguous that way. That's
a third axis of distinctions.

> It may sound like I am introducing a wholly new idea, but I believe
> that the general lojbanological understanding was, implicitly, that
> all propositions in a clause were claimed to be true of one and
> the same world.

I don't dispute there was a tendency (and maybe there still is)
to do that, but surely it could never have been absolute
because some predicates (like xanri) require their arguments to
exist in different worlds.

> That is no longer the case, since {ti pixra pa
> -detective} can now describe a depiction of Sherlock Holmes, even
> when it is mutually manifest in the context that Holmes is a
> literary fiction. I think therefore that there has been an
> ontological shift in Lojban of late. I don't object to it, but I
> do think there ought to be a way of expressing things with the
> old-style meaning too.

We don't impose any ontology on Lojban. Speakers are free to use
the language in such a way that they only refer to non-fictional
things if they so wish.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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