Re: CHAT: the gay Canadian (was: "have a nice day")

>Matt Pearson wrote:
>
>> Matt.
>> the (expatriate) gay Canadian
>
>After picking on Dirk's "anymore", I think it's time to pick
>on Matt's "the" above.  Just what does it mean?  There doesn't
>seem to be any definiteness here, unlike "The Gr[ae]y Wizard",
>for example.  "Nick the Greek" was clearly not the only Greek,
>nor even the only Greek in the context (professional gamblers),
>yet "Nick a Greek" is impossible, and even non-restrictive
>"Nick, a Greek" is a bit odd, sort of newspaper-style.
Perhaps "the X" in this case means "the individual out of some
(perhaps unspecified) set of individuals who is identified or
identifiable by virtue of being an X".  This seems like a natural
metaphorical extension of the normal meaning of "the" from
ordinary definite descriptions to epithets.  How are epithetical
(??) expressions handled in Lojban?

Matt.