Wiki page BPFK Section: Causation sumtcita changed by rlpowell
> On 6/8/05, John.Cowan
> <jcowan@reutershealth.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> English is not all that ambiguous though:
>
> "says a sentence" 991 hits
> "expresses a sentence" 20 hits
>
> "expresses a proposition" 869 hits
> "says a proposition" 29 hits
>
> So I think English pretty clearly distinguishes
This seems to make it clear that English does;
should Lojban? Apparently at some point the
thinking was that it should not but that all
should be reduced to the English "say." But the
English data given is questionable: is it really
the case that we say "He says "..."" 50 times as
often as "He says that ..."? (I admit that "He
expresses "..."" does strike me as perverse.) I
really doubt it. And that is the issue here, I
suppose.
> "to express (a meaning)" from "to say
> (something
> with meaning)", i.e. One says lo valsi/lo se
> smuni
> to express lo se valsi/lo smuni. It is Lojban
> that
> muddles things by using both words as glosses
> of
> {cusku}.
>
> The problem is that Lojban does not have a good
> clear way of saying "x1 (person) expresses/puts
> forth
> (meaning) x2 with words/symbols x3".
>
> {jarco} could be used, but it covers much more
> ground,
> because expression is done through a symbol,
> but
> showing can be direct. We need a good lujvo for
> "express".
>
Yes, we need a predicate to introduce indirect
discourse and maybe the whole range of symbolic .
speech (usually the finger, it seems). {cusku}
seems to have about the right structure, just the
wrong restriction (and the medium might be more
important than the audience).