Message-Id: <199412092337.AA05006@nfs1.digex.net>
Date:         Fri, 9 Dec 1994 20:10:25 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject:      Re: reply: (1) veridicality; (2) plurality
To: Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>
In-Reply-To:  (Your message of Thu, 08 Dec 94 13:18:10 MST.)
Status: RO

Chris:
> And says:
> >Returning to "the king of France is bald", referring to entity A.
> >I see no reason to stop believing that English grammar derives from this
> >phrase the following:
> >   Ex x is king of France & x=A & x/A is bald
>
> But in Lojbab's and my proposed contexts (a play or a mental hospital),
> the phrase "the king of france" is used to refer to real people (a
> character in a play, a mental patient).  The speaker and the listener
> both know this. They also both know the referrent isn't actually the
> king of France.  Thus it's a "reference" (speaker and listener know
> what's being referred to, even if you claim not to :-)) but it's not
> "veridicial", and they both know that too. If this is not a
> "non-veridicial reference" then I'm afraid I don't know what the term
> means (which is a distinct possibility!)

This is beside the point. 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.

English grammar derives
> >   Ex x is king of France & x=A & x/A is bald
In the play or mental patient context, communication succeeds because
both speakers realize this proposition is false, and that therefore
the speaker intends the addressee to infer a further different
proposition (i.e. that the patient who thinks they are the k of f
is bald).

> >But the truth or falsity makes little difference to the communicative
> >efficacy of an utterance. Considering truth is a method employed by
> >some semanticists, not by speakers and addressees.
>
> I disagree.  If the character/patient in our examples was in fact
> *not* bald, the addressees would have objected.

Not so. The addressee would have objected only if they could infer
no relevant proposition from the 'explicature' (i.e. the proposition
derived by the grammar) of the utterance.

> Semantics is about the meanings of utterances, and meaning has to
> to with what's been communicated.

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.

> If A tells B, using sentence S, that C is bald, and
> C is in fact bald, then it's the semanticist's job to analyze S and
> see how it communicated the fact,

This is the pragmatician's job, not the semanticist's. (I mean it's
the pragmatician's job to see how S communicates.)

> not to assign an independent and arbitrary truth value to S and claim
> that A and B are uninterested in the truth.

Semanticists do assign truth values to propositions. I don't know what
an independent and arbitrary truth value is.

It is not the semanticist's job to care about what A and B are interested
in. It is the pragmatician's job. And a pragmatician who is doing their
job properly will observe that the truth of an utterance's explicature
is not very important to A and B.

> You're defining "truth" in an odd way that makes obviously true
> statements "false to semanticists".

I don't think I'm defining truth, but especially not in an odd way.
Rather, I think that these allegedly obviously true statements are
nothing of the sort (i.e. not only not obviously true, but also not
true).

The issue behind this thread is whether English is always +veridical
(as I claim), and, I suppose, what exactly it means to say "le" is
-veridical and "lo" +veridical.

----
And