reply: (1) veridicality; (2) plurality

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

I said:
> >I think this is "The king of France is bald", isn't it? If so, we really
> >don't want to get embroiled in this discussion. However, to my (very
> >limited) knowledge, the opposing positions regarding "the king of France
> >is bald" are (a) that it is false, and (b) that it has no truth value,
> >or has a 3rd truth value (i.e. not T or F). I am not aware of a position
> >that holds the statement to be true [but as I say, I am ill acquainted
> >with the literature].

Chris says:
> No, it's not quite the same issue.  Your analysis of the king of France
> statement depends on it being a veridicial reference.

It's not my analysis: I was making an Appeal to Authority!
To my severely limited knowledge, 'logical semanticists' don't assume
nonveridicality.

> If two workers at an mental hospital are talking about a well-known patient
> with no hair who believes himself to be the king of France, and whose name
> they don't remember, they might say this and it would be factually true.

"Factually true" is putting the cart before the horse. We can't decide
whether it's true (strictly speaking) until we know what it means. And
part of the problem is the confusion about what the notion "meaning of
a sentence" involves. More on this below.

Lojbab:
> But with "le", and with English "the", "The king of France is bald" CAN be
> true.  Imagine that you are preparing for a play, and someone auditions
> for the part of Louis XIV (or other appropriate king) with shoulder length
> hair which they are unwilling to crop.  You might indeed say
> "The king of France is bald" and it would indeed be true.  This is because
> English "the" is not veridical - the king of France need not actually be
> a monarch ruling over the nation of France that one reads about in the
> newspapers.

I repeat my reply to Chris. I also repeat my contention that by the
only viable definition [see below] of veridicality, English (including
"the") is veridical. In this case if the sense of "king of France" is
king(_,France) then even in the contexts you and Chris cite, the
sentence "The king of France is bald" is not true (I hold back from
saying it's false).
[I can also get an interpretation of your context in which "the king
of France is bald" is both veridical and true: i.e. in a dramatic,
nonreal fictionalized context, e.g. "The heir of Isildur had a beard"
where the world is Tolkien's.]

*** What is veridicality?
(A) A rule of semantics:
    Iff a 'sumti' (e.g. "lV cukta", "a book") is +veridical
    derive:
       Ex x is a book [if -specific]
       Ex x is a book & x=A [if +specific referring to A]
(B) A rule of semantics involving speaker & addressee:
    As (A), but deriving additionally:
       I guarantee to you that I assert: Ex x is a book (& x=A)
(C) A rule of pragmatics:
    Iff a 'sumti' is +veridical it is REALLY BAD AND ANTISOCIAL
    to not mean it literally.

*** Is English always +veridical?
If (A) is right, then Yes it is.
If (C) is right, then No it isn't [but nor is Lojban].
If (B) is right, then it is hard or impossible to tell, since the
guarantee would fail unless backed up by social taboo (like Don't
Say "fuck" In Polite Company). ((C) above is such a taboo rule.)
A grammar cannot regulate how it gets used: only language-external
rules of proper behaviour can.
For this reason, (B) would also fail for Lojban, as would the wish
among some Lojbanists that "ko" only be used for genuine commands, and
"xu, mo, ma, etc." only be used when genuinely soliciting information
[cf. old discussion on how to translate "Do you know where the
toilet is?"]

Returning to "the king of France is bald", referring to entity A.
I see no reason to stop believing that English grammar derives from this
phrase the following:
   Ex x is king of France & x=A & x/A is bald
By contrast, in Lojban "le [king of france] cu [bald]" the grammar
will derive the following:
   A is bald & I describe A as king of France
With A = the late Telly Savalas, the English sentence is false and
the Lojban is true.
But the truth or falsity makes little difference to the communicative
efficacy of an utterance. Considering truth is a method employed by
some semanticists, not by speakers and addressees.

NIHO

Lojbab:
> >What I think is malglico (but not carmi malglico) is not the decision
> >not to make number distinctions obligatory, but rather the failure to
> >design in a short & simple way to indicate plurality.
> But why plurality in paritcular.  Why not  singular/dual/su'oci?
> Or why not the Russian system which is singular/2-5/su'oxa but then after
> 20 cycles again on the last 1 or 2 digits so that 21 is singular?
> (Russian also does have a straight plural but it is not used when there
> is a specific number involved.)

I don't think Russian is relevant, since the issue concerns not number
as a morphosyntactic feature (by which, if I understand you, 21 is
singular) but number as grammaticalized device for indicating 1 vs. >1
of something.

As for singular/dual/trial/paucal etc, we have "lV sohu" for paucal, and
"lV ci" for trial. One could say that "lV re" does duals, but I think
duals are generally used for natural pairs, like eyes, hands, etc. That
sort of dual would be nice to have, since a pair of eyes is as much
your basic ocular unit as a single eye is [- but this gets us into
the murky issue of how, when we do count things, we decide what
constitutes a unit].

Why plurality in particular? Because (a) it is very widespread among
languages, (b) it is logically important, since (i) the collective/
distributive distinction is neutralized for singles, and (ii) a plurality
can be quantified over unvacuously, and (c) it is cognitively important
since plurals but not singulars necessarily entail some degree of
differentiability among members of the category.

If there's any chance of me getting us a compact PA meaning "suhore",
I'll keep the argument up.

---
And