Re: anaphor means what? (was: oops! correction)

[cowan (John Cowan)]

Jim Carter writes:
> In the -gua!spi interpretation, by the time sentences 2 and 3 get hold
> of sentence 1, sentence 1's anaphora have already been replaced by
> their antecedents, and so (neglecting minor infinite loops) the same
> effect is achieved as in Lojban.  This relies on the fact that repeated
> sumti (without anaphora) will have the same referents.  

There is a fundamental difference between GOhI and GOhI RAhO that arises
even where the referenced sentence isn't self-referential.  Consider
this case:

	mi ba lumci le mi zdani
	I will wash my house.

Someone hearing this might say "mi go'i" or "mi go'i ra'o" in reply.
These mean different things:

	mi go'i
	I will wash your house.
	mi go'i ra'o
	I will wash my house.

In both rejoinders, the explicit "mi" refers to the second speaker.  In the
first case, the "mi" hidden inside the "go'i" continues to refer to the first
speaker, as it did in its original context.  The second response, however,
is flagged by the "ra'o", and so the original binding is abandoned
in favor of the binding of "mi" that would be appropriate in the new context.

The difference is not one of copying words vs. copying referents, but of
copying words alone (with "ra'o") or copying the words plus the original
bindings of embedded anaphora (the default).  Lispers know this as the
"funarg" problem.  By default, Lojban is a full-funarg language like Scheme;
it is possible, using "ra'o", to override this and impose dynamic binding
instead.

--
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		e'osai ko sarji la lojban