Re: reply: (1) veridicality; (2) plurality

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

Kris:
> >> > Had
> >> >I enough time and intelligence I'd write out the grammar of
> >> >English and point out the relevant rules to you.
> >> Where in *what* grammar?
> >Where in, say, the grammar of your idiolect.
> Oops, we're not communicating.  I thought a grammar was a bunch of made-up
> rules attempting to describe a natural phenomenon, language, and that there
> could be more than grammar which could correctly describe English, i.e.
> different derivations and theories leading to the same result.
> Is that correct?

The word is ambiguous. An idiolect has a grammar, just like chess has
a set of rules. And we can write a model of the grammar, just as we
can write a model of the rules of chess. I've been meaning grammar as
in "set of rules" not as in "description of set of rules".

> >> An English Grammar would not be
> >> useful if it contained a hard and fast derivation like that for "Sophy
> >> kicked the bucket", that didn't consider the pragmatics *before* reaching
> >> the final proposition of "Sophy died" or "Sophy hit a container with her
> > foot".
> >The two propositions you mention are both grammatically-determined
> >meanings --- one of a sentence with an idiom, and one of a sentence
> >without an idiom. Each sentence has its GDM irrespective of context.
> I don't understand your use of "each sentence".  The two propositions at the
> end of my paragraph are supposed to be possible GDMs of the *single*
> sentence, "Sophy kicked the bucket".  Which one is *really* that sentence's
 GDM?

I don't know which sentence you mean. If it's the sentence containing
the idiom, then the GDM is "die", while if it's the sentence containing
non-idiomatic KICK then the GDM is "hit with foot". The idiomaticity
of KICK is a grammatical difference.

> >> I read you as claiming that
> >> semantics is prior to pragmatics, in some schematic of how the brain
> >> processes langauge, and I don't think that's necessarily so.  The two
 things
> >> are intertwined.
> >
> >I don't think this, and doubt I said anything like it. I don't think
> >semantics is entirely prior. As for primacy, I give it primacy over
> >non-grammar in the context of Lojban, since Lojban is at the stage
> >of grammar-development.
> Maybe I misunderstood your chess analogy.  Chess rules are entirely prior to
> chess strategy, are they not?  The rules affect the strategy but the
> strategy cannot affect the rules.  I assumed you meant that
> grammar/semantics is like the chess rules, and pragmatics is like chess
> strategy.

Chess rules, like semantics, are logically prior, but not necessarily
procedurally prior. For example, a player may have first decided their
strategy, and only then they choose their move.

> >> If Sperber and Wilson merely say that "twenty" can mean any of these
 things,
> >> then I have no argument with them.  But if they claim there's a fixed
> >> English grammar, with fixed rules like chess, that derive 20 from twenty,
> >> and THEN another process gets 'give me another banana' from 20 and the
> >> context, I disagree.  It doesn't explain the pun, or homonyms in general.
> >
> >They are saying what you disagree with.
>
> That's why I use the word 'primacy' -- apparently they claim one thing
> happens first, then the other.

One needs to make these procedural claims with caution. For example,
the addressee might guess the speaker is going to ask for another
banana. They then hear "twenty", access the GDM '20', and then check
that the guessed request for another banana is inferrable from '20'.

> >You misunderstand the nature
> >of the pun and of homonymy: these are evidence of the role in disambiguating
> >a phonological structure which may represent a number of alternative
> >grammatical structures. [That shouldn't happen with Lojban, which has
> >no homonymy.]
>
> I can see that maybe my example of phonetic disambiguation was a little off
> the point.  Let me ask this: how do you know that such things as figurative
> speech and 20-as-give-me-another-banana-ism aren't grammatical?

They are grammatical - or at least literality has nothing to do with
grammaticality.

> More to the
> point how do you know the literal interpretation is computed first, and the
> 'real' interpretation sussed out later (in time or in the mental assembly
 line)?

The literal interp is logically prior, but I would be very cautious about
saying how the brain handles these things.

> >So yes, Lojban can be an experiment: does it get used non-literally,
> >in the absence of social stigma attached to non-literality. I predict
> >yes, and you apparently predict no.
>
> Well, I'll hedge that by saying that I predict the use of a marker
> specifically for marking literality/figurativity will be used as it was
> intended.

I wouldn't challenge this, though there will be cases when such markers
could be used but aren't.

> >> What is Crimbo?
> >
> >A dialect word for Christmas. I like it because it feels apter.
>
> This is a dialect in England you are referring to?  Where does the word come
> from?  I like it.

It's some English dialect, but I haven't been able to work out which.
That is, I haven't spotted the regional pattern in who knows the word
and who doesn't. (Some people say Crimble, which wasn't used where I
grew up.)

> >I wasn't terribly keen on Jorge's xisnun[birth]. Maybe I'd use "lo krimbo".
>
> Can you do that?  "kri" is a rafsi but "mbo" isn't.  How about "la krimbos."?

It would be a fuhivla. I much prefer fuhivla to cmene.

---
And