Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 11:52:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711191652.LAA27375@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: veridicality in English X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1271 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 19 11:52:09 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Robin: > 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". In other words, you are saying that THE is nonveridical and thereby demonstrating the falsity of your initial assertion. Either that, or you would apply all of your reamrks to all determiners. In this case, you're not making a point about English versus Lojban. Rather, you're making a point not couched in terms of truth-conditional semantics. Unless we assume truth-conditional semantics, a discussion of veridicality is meaningless. tersenss due to haste: I'll have more time tomorrow --And