On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 4:42 PM, And Rosta
<and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
Jonathan Jones, On 16/10/2010 23:08:
The whole "that(WH)x" construct is a bit confusing. It looks to me
like a function, but being a math geek, not a linguistics geek, I
can't be sure, and have no idea what the function is if I'm right,
thus causing me vast amounts of consternation.>
If you mean it looks like a function because of the notation, disregard that -- it was ad hoc notation I made up on the fly. If you mean that logically it looks to be some sort of function, then yes -- it's a function from an incomplete (aka 'open') proposition (containing one or more variables) to the generic proposition that is its true completion. I.e. take the set of all propositions differentiated by different values for the variables (e.g. "John came" and "Bill came" and "Sue came" for the incomplete "x came"), select those that are true, and -- there are logical variants on this last step -- abstract them into a generic. And that's the referent of the interrogative complementizer.