| In a message dated 4/19/2001 12:11:01 PM Central Daylight Time,
rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org writes: However, I would certainly add something clarifying such entailment to a About as good a statement of how an implicature (not an implcation, by the way) works as is likely to come along. I am committed, as a cooperating interlocutor, to saying all and only what is relevant and known. If,in a discussion of olive liking (wherer do these unlikely examples come from?) I say "In my family only my wife likes olives" and leave it at that, then either she likes olives or I have failed to be a cooperative interlocutor, since I could have said "No one in my family likes olives" if even my wife does not. But being a cooperative interlocutor does not mean one hasto be a boring one or even a very nice one, so I can fulfill my task by adding --as I am wont to do, alas -- "and even she doesn't like them". My duty is done and I have given everybody a little jolt, compensating for the fact that noone shakes my hand anymore after the unfortunate miswired joybuzzer incident (fictitious). I am not as mean in this as the imagined house-namer, though even he is within his rights, but setting up for a hell of a {ta'u ma} (I knew a couple who had a pure white dog named Spot -- because he was a pure white spot on any scene he entered). As for putting in a {zo'o}, if they can't get a joke, fuck3'em. Of course, now that we have established what triggers these kinds of implicatures (and it does not actually have to be designated individuals), we have the warning already in place: Lojban needs to do no more that English, etc. does -- avoid practical jokers and logicians. On the other hand, if you really want to make something of it all, you have {po'o} which is a floating disaster at the moment. If you use it only as though it were a quantifier (since it is UI, it can occur anywhere and so can occur anyhwere PA can -- though in the middle of string of digits is a little odd) or to write some rules for it to assure that every use of it couldbe changed into a quantifier form, then you would have an "only" that carried the exemplification condition that you feel is needed. I rather likethat idea actually, since it allows me to get my universal with existential import in (the existential import of universals may, in fact, be only an implicature, too, but it got embedded in logic at the beginning and hasbeen hard to shake -- and it distinguishes two class of universals in English, so it has some practical values as well). |