RE: "what i have for dinner"

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@xxxxx.xxxx]

> From: John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
> 
> And Rosta wrote:
> 
> > This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally
> > intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating
> > things here, rather than interrogativity per se.
> 
> It almost certainly is. To paraphrase Ursula LeGuin, I can take
> a little indirect-question, or a little epistemology, but the
> combination is poison.
> 
> > Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their
> > semantics in the linguistics literature.
> 
> That's because many people don't think there's a problem, and the
> few who do know that it is intractable. (I found this out via
> Linguist List some years ago.)

I don't remember any discussion on Linguist about that. If you
could exercise a bit of your detective genius & locate it for me
somewhere I'd be very very grateful.

> > I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> > whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> > logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> > never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> > insurance premium ones above.
> 
> Let us consider "wonder", which is nonepistemic. If I wonder who came
> to the party, it does not follow that (Ax) (I wonder whether X came).
> For example, I do not wonder whether Julius Caesar came, or the 
> planet Mars, or the number 4.

On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".

Perhaps "We decided who was to be invited" is more definitely not
epistemic.

I haven't found the peace of mind to contemplate the problem yet, &
will reply to others' suggestions when I have.

--And.