From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Sep 23 06:15:35 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_3); 23 Sep 2002 13:15:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 20935 invoked from network); 23 Sep 2002 13:15:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m14.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 23 Sep 2002 13:15:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 23 Sep 2002 13:15:35 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 23 Sep 2002 13:43:18 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:15:51 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:15:27 +0100 To: lojban Subject: notes on conventional implicature (was Re: tu'o usage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Lionel Vidal 09/23/02 08:40am >>> [....] #> > {lo pa broda naku brode} =3D {su 'o lo pa broda naku brode} #> > =3D {naku zu'o ro lo pa broda cu brode} =3D {ro lo pa broda na brode} #> I don't agree that the last 2 are equivalent to the first 2, since #> the first 2 mean: #> ge su'o broda na ku brode gi lo'i broda cu pa mei #> and the second two mean: #> na ku ge ro broda cu brode gi lo'i broda cu pa mei # #I agree and so now we reach the problem that bothered me for a while: #consider {OUTER lo INNER broda na brode} #Would you say that this is true when: # the brode relationship is false # or the cardinality of the underlying set of broda given by INNER is fals= e # or the cardinality of the broda involved in the relationship given # by OUTER is false #(with of course inclusive or). That's a convoluted question! But now that I work out what you're saying, surely the answer is a totally uncontroversial Yes. Oh, hang on -- I see what you meant. You are asking if each of the conditions is sufficient to make the sentence true (-- my first reading was that you were asking if one of the conditions was sufficient to make the sentence true). Okay -- my answer is Yes, though not an uncontroversial Yes -- I'm still waiting to hear from pc his reasons for saying No. #I would say yes and this invalidates my previous claims on the implication #of the broda referent existence when using {na}. #And so {tu'o}, because of its lesser sensitivity to the problems #negations involve, seems indeed useful to me now: thank you #for your patient explanations. Wow! I can't remember the last time I ever persuaded anybody of anything on this list! #and: #>This is because #>Lojban makes little if any use of presupposition/conventional #>implicature (outside of UI, at least), #pc: #>I thnk that there are a variety of facts that suggest that internal #>quantification is presuppositional # #Sorry, I may have a problem with my english there: I am not sure of #what you mean with 'presupposition implicature'. There is a linguistic phenomenon variously called 'presupposition' (and older but still current term) and 'conventional implicature' (following the work of H. P. Grice -- see Wiki). I prefer the latter term (and I don't want to get into arguments about whether presupposition is different from conventional implicature). What this phenomenon involves is that something is contained in the linguistically-encoded meaning of the sentence, yet is outside the scope of what is asserted. A classic way of testing this is to apply negation, which does not cancel conv-implic. So for example,=20 1 "He is poor but happy" means 2 "[unasserted:] There is an incongruity between being poor and=20 being happy=20 and I assert that he is poor and happy" while 3 "He isn't poor but happy" means 4 "[unasserted:] There is an incongruity between being poor and=20 being happy=20 and I assert that he isn't poor and happy" and not 5 "It is not the case that [unasserted:] There is an incongruity between=20 being poor and being happy=20 and I assert that he is poor and happy" =20 (There is a phenomenon called 'metalinguistic negation' -- Lojban na'i -- which in English involves special intonation and the appropriate context -- which can cancel conv-implic; cf. 6. He isn't 'poor BUT happy'; he's poor AND happy. ) Lojban definitely has conventional implicature: * some UI * "le broda" is equivalent to=20 "[unasserted:] da poi ro lu'a ke'a broda .... [asserted:] ro lu'a da" However, these are special cases. Other debated cases have been resolved against conv-implic. For example, in English the object of "know" is conventionally-implicated to be true: "She didn't know he was bald" still implicates that "he was bald", but in Lojban it doesn't. --And.