Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 10:53:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711191553.KAA25562@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: veridicality in English X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199711182046.WAA13530@firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 850 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 19 10:54:01 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU John wrote: >Rather, I take the traditional view: "the"/"a" do not encode >specificity or veridicality except by accident. What they primarily >encode is definiteness (defined as "listener knows what's meant"). > Absolutely! English articles have nothing to do with veridicality; they are primarily discourse devices. "The dog" means something like "an entity I have in mind, which I regard as a particular member of the set of dogs, and with which I assume you are familiar". If I say "I'm going to take the dog for a walk", you assume, ceteris paribus, that I really have a real dog, but this comes from the normal rules of discourse, not my use of "the". I could actually have a pet alligator, which I jokingly refer to as "the dog". Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey.