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Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2
Jorge Llambías, On 10/10/2014 21:59:
On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 8:18 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>> wrote:
Take the present case as an example. Suppose you want to say "zo'e ge broda gi poi'i mi jinvi lo du'u ke'a brodu". By the candidate rules I'm counterposing to yours, that could simply be rendered as the morphophonologically simpler "mi jinvi lo du'u lo broda cu brodu".
Yes, but suppose you want to say: "zo'e ga nai broda gi poi'i mi
jinvi lo du'u ke'a brodu", which has the same logical structure, just
a different connective. Would we need a new gadri to go with this
form? And another one for "zo'e gu broda gi poi'i mi jinvi lo du'u
ke'a brodu", and so on? I suppose you are saying that the structure
of "zo'e ge broda gi poi'i mi jinvi lo du'u ke'a brodu" is something
we want to use so often that it should have a simpler form, even at
the cost of complicating other rules, while I'm not seeing that it is
that necessary.
I'm not saying it's necessary, just that it's useful and not daft, and that therefore one is not led ineluctably, because of the lack of alternatives, to the presuppositional version but rather is faced with an apparently arbitrary choice between the presuppositional and nonpresuppositional versions.
When it is used to refer to the asking of a question, it is an
argument of "... is the reason for ...", but when used to ask a
question, it is not. It just happens that we can conveniently use it
for both things at the same time.
In "use it for both things at the same time", what is "it"?
The proposition expressed by "I ask whether it is dinner time yet."
As I understand it, I'm saying that the logical form for the sentence contains only the illocution "I hereby ask whether", while you are saying it contains both the illocution and a separate referential description of the illocution. But in that case, there is nothing that is being used for both things at the same time.
I'm saying that the single locution (and the proposition it
expresses) is being used simultaneously with two different
illocutionary forces, in two different illocutionary acts. In one of
the acts, "ask" is performative, in the other act it is not. It's
just that I find it very hard to see a question as constituting a
part of a claim. Possibly it's just a matter of definition and the
classification of illocutionary acts, I'm not sure we are actually
discussing anything very substantial..
We seem not so much to be disagreeing as to each be using a model of sentence meaning that differs from the other's in ways we have not fathomed the nature of.
My understanding doesn't have access to a model of sentence meaning in which propositions are used for things (such as illocutionary acts). I understand illocutionary operators to be part of logical form, and, for the reasons under discussion, an illocutionary operator can be an argument -- in this particular example, a question can be a causee, which is not ontologically weird. The illocutionary operator in its own right is (interpreted as) an action, while as argument of another predicate that in turn is argument of a different (in this instamce, assertive) illocutionary operator, it is part of a description of a state of affairs. The dual function of the rogative illocutionary is due to the way logical forms are interpreted: each illocutionary is interpreted as a performative action, and the argument of an illocutionary is interpreted as a description of a state of affairs. I claim not that my understanding is the only possible coherent one, but rather only that my understanding
is the only coherent one I'm aware of.
--And.
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