From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Sun Nov  6 13:43:31 1994
Message-Id: <199411061843.AA25867@nfs1.digex.net>
Date: Sun Nov 6 13:43:31 1994
From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: -veridical, -specific
Status: RO

la goran cusku di'e

> coi doi rodo
>
> Dunno if I got this right, but, how about: "Pick your favourite superhero."
>
> Isn't that -veridical, -specific?

That seems to me +veridical, +specific.

> There are no things that really are
> superheroes

How can you pick one, then?

> (by this I mean Superman, Spidey, Flash etc., guys that can
> do outrageous stuff without being punished by the letter of the Laws of
> the Universe).

How can you say that there are no superheroes and then give a list of
superheroes. Is "Superman is a superhero" true? If yes, then the set
of superheroes is not the empty set, and you can make claims about
"lo" superhero.  The fact that Superman is a character of fiction
doesn't make him a less valid referent.

> So it's -veridical.

Veridical doesn't mean real-life, it means that the referent satisfies
the predicate.

> It is also -specific, because the
> choice is not made at the time of the utterance.

"Your favourite superhero" is +specific, it has a specific referent.
An example of -specific would be: "I picked a superhero", where I am not
specifying which one. But the claim is false if the set of superheroes is
the empty set, because then I couldn't have picked one.

Jorge