From a.rosta@xxxxx.xxxx Wed Dec 8 15:30:25 1999 X-Digest-Num: 305 Message-ID: <44114.305.1671.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 23:30:25 -0000 From: "And Rosta" From: John Cowan > > And Rosta wrote: > > > This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally > > intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating > > things here, rather than interrogativity per se. > > It almost certainly is. To paraphrase Ursula LeGuin, I can take > a little indirect-question, or a little epistemology, but the > combination is poison. > > > Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their > > semantics in the linguistics literature. > > That's because many people don't think there's a problem, and the > few who do know that it is intractable. (I found this out via > Linguist List some years ago.) I don't remember any discussion on Linguist about that. If you could exercise a bit of your detective genius & locate it for me somewhere I'd be very very grateful. > > I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know > > whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into > > logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I > > never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the > > insurance premium ones above. > > Let us consider "wonder", which is nonepistemic. If I wonder who came > to the party, it does not follow that (Ax) (I wonder whether X came). > For example, I do not wonder whether Julius Caesar came, or the > planet Mars, or the number 4. On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)". Perhaps "We decided who was to be invited" is more definitely not epistemic. I haven't found the peace of mind to contemplate the problem yet, & will reply to others' suggestions when I have. --And.