Wiki page BPFK Section: Causation sumtcita changed by rlpowell
wrote:
> John E Clifford scripsit:
>
> > This is very strange; can someone give me the
> > history of what would lead someone to say
> such a
> > thing. My wordlist clearly has {cusku2} as
> what
> > is expressed or said; not whatever the
> > alternative here claimed is.
>
> The point is that "express" is ambiguous in
> English; we express
> sentences, and we also express propositions by
> uttering sentences.
> Lojban takes the first view exclusively.
Well, that seems authoritative and is coherent
with the comments in the word list, but it
provides evidence that the people who devised the
definitions sometimes worked in the deep darkness
of their own lower colons. By this definition,
{cusku2} can only be a direct quotation or a
description of one: not a translation, not a
summary, not an indirect quotation. By the
xorxesian reasoning, {cu'u} then can only be
inserted (somehow) into a direct quotation. This
latter is unfortunate, since we need an
"according to" sort of evidential expression now
that the same xorxesian reasoning has removed
{du'o} from that use to the relatively useless
"as known by." The former is also unfortunate as
it deprives us of a natural direct way to express
indirect discourse. To be sure, {cusku lo se
du'u} is not that much longer than {cusku lo
du'u}, but is conceptually more complex, having
to go explicitly by way of the actual expressions
used [By the way, has anyone noticed how screwed
up the definition of {du'u} is. By that
definition a complete sentence would have the
format {ko'a klama du'u li ko'a klama li'u} and
the corresponding sumti would be {lo du'u be li
ko'a klama li'u}. These do not parse, needless
(I hope) to say. While in deep structure a
sentence can be a NP, at the surface they always
require some sort of overt mark. The expressions
seems always to have been used — even in CLL
--parallel to the other abstractors in the form
"x1 is the proposition that [bridi]," not as a
relation between a bridi and a sentence. This
makes {se du'u} illegitimate by xorxesian rules,
though this is not a BAI, so the rules may not
apply] My impression is that {cusku} has been
used more loosely, that it has not been treated
as a mere generalization of {bacru} and {ciska},
tied to physical presentation rather than to what
is intended by that presentation. There is also
the logical problem that burying a quantifier in
a predicates is almost always a mistake (or a
deliberate cheat) and {cusku} now means, as
xorxes points out, "x1 expresses something by
saying x2...." I assume that {pinka} is restricte
in the same way. I would suggest loosening both
of these a bit.