Message-Id: <m0rGV6B-00007LC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 10 Dec 1994 16:53:34 +0000
Reply-To:     ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: reply: (1) veridicality
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
In-Reply-To:  (Your message of Fri, 09 Dec 94 18:51:34 MST.)
              <199412100155.RAA09046@netcom15.netcom.com>
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Lines: 130

Chris:
> And:
> >Perhaps this is the root of our disagreement. Standardly, semantics
> >is about only the grammatically-determined meaning of utterances,
> >while it is *pragmatics* that has to do with what's been communicated.
> >"Meaning" is too broad a notion for semantics, and too narrow a
> >notion for pragmatics. I only use the word when being deliberately
> >vague.
> Oops, maybe you're right.  I'll try to keep in mind the difference
> between pragmatics and semantics.  But useful as the distinction
> may be I hope it doesn't cloud the fact that the two are
> intertwined and simultaneous in actual use.

They are simultaneous. "Intertwined" they are only to the extent that
pragmatic context serves to disambiguate and fix referent assignment
in the explicature. Otherwise explicature is context-independent.

> Specifically I question the utility of the concept of "expliciture"
> -- could it be partly an artifact of the artificial distinction
> between semantics and pragmatics?

It is an artefact of the semantics-pragmatics distinction, which is
a theoretical distinction, and therefore perhaps 'artifial', though
not necessarily false.

As for the utility of the notion of explicature, it seems indispensible
to me. May I refer you to Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson (1986) _Relevance:
communication and cognition_, where they motivate the notion (& invent
the word)? More generally, any textbook on pragmatics will discuss the
distinction between "what an utterance literally says" and "what the
speaker communicates to the addressee".

> >If I say "lo king of France" & we both know
> >I'm actually referring to a banana, then this is a non-veridical
> >reference. That tells us nothing about the grammar of Lojban, according
> >to which "lo" is a marker of veridicality.
> There are lots of ways we might use Lojban in contradiction to its
> formal definition.  If you use "lo" in a non-veridicial case, it
> will be jarring to a fluent lojbanist, just as if you said "The
> *real* king of France" in English but meant a mere actor or mental
> patient.

Will it be jarring to a fluent Lojbanist? This depends on whether
veridicality is a grammatical constraint on deriving explicatures
or a social, pragmatic constraint on deriving implicatures (i.e.
propositions the explicature implies in the discourse context).
Only in the latter case should the usage jar. In the former case,
the usage ought simply to give rise to extra effects: the addressee
will assume the speaker is trying to communicate something extra
by the nonliteral use of "lo". This is what would happen with your
English example "the real king of France is bald" - if this is still
referring to the actor, then maybe "real king" is in contrast to an
understudy who is a pretender to the role.

> Maybe we're still getting caught up in terminology; how would you
> describe my use of the word "*real*" above? That's what I thought
> +veridicial meant, but as should be obvious, I have no formal
> training in linguistics.

I would say your use of "real" modifies the explicature:
    Ex it is true that x is king of France
(or something along these lines).

It is my personal experience that lojban list offers a pretty good
training in linguistics. It's dead useful to me, anyway. If I were
a tycoon I'd fund a chair of lojbanistics & then Lojbab could get
a proper salary for what he does.

> BTW after reading your last post I had a better understanding of the issues,
> so I want to comment on one other thing you said:
> >A grammar cannot regulate how it gets used: only language-external
> >rules of proper behaviour can.
> >For this reason, (B) would also fail for Lojban, as would the wish
> >among some Lojbanists that "ko" only be used for genuine commands, and
> >"xu, mo, ma, etc." only be used when genuinely soliciting information
> >[cf. old discussion on how to translate "Do you know where the
> >toilet is?"]
> Just because a grammar can't regulate how it gets used doesn't mean la
> lojbangirz. can't! :-)

Indeed not. The jbogirzu can indeed develop these taboos ("thou shalt
not use 'ko' or 'lo' in vain, on pain of being very antisocial"). But
lohe jboprenu does not seem to me an archconformist.

> As an artificial language, the definers of Lojban have to pick what
> they will prescribe and what they will leave up to chance.  LLG/TLI
> seem to lean towards the prescriptivist end; another interesting
> example would be the ban on unmarked figurative language.

This is interesting. Yes the proscription against unmarked figurative
language is another example.
I think you're half right & half wrong about LLG having prescriptivist
leanings (I don't know about TLI, since the Loglanists list is notable
only for its perpetual silence). You're half wrong because I think
prescriptivist is the last thing LLG would wish to be: there is a
vivid streak of liberalism in lo lojbo. Witness how often Lojbab says
"let usage decide", without prescribing what the outcome of usage's
decision ought to be.
  But you're half right because it does appear that some lojbo prime
movers fail to adequately distinguish between the grammar (which cannot
but be prescribed, else there would be no grammar, and hence no
language) and usage. Thus there are prescriptions concerning usage,
notably the 'literality' requirement pertaining to 'ko', 'lo' and
what have you: these are social rather than grammatical rules, but
I believe they arise not through any authoritarianism on the part
of LLG but through a failure to realize that they are social rather
than grammatical rules. Once language users start to flout the rules,
I doubt that any lojbo prime mover will start breathing fire,
cracking the whip, writing outraged letters to Juhi Lobypilno or
the like.

> Prescribing pragmatics seems particularly valuable to efforts to
> communicate with computers.  I think it's useful to know whether
> it can be done or not, because if people can learn to do this,
> it will simplify the programmers' job in making human language
> interfaces.

The small amount of research on this question that I know about
got people to converse with (a) a real computer, and (b) someone
they thought was a computer (because they were hidden from sight
and speaking through a vocoder). In both cases, the subjects
modified their language, as they would in speaking to a child or
foreigner.

If people found that using figurative language to a computer led
to communication failures, they would naturally adapt their usage
accordingly. Lojban doesn't really have to worry about this.

------
And