Re: veridicality

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

Bob Chassell:
> ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk cuska di'e
>     I certainly support Colin & Jorge's view: veridicality is a rather
>     unnecessary and uninteresting distinction, while specificity/
>     nonspecificity is absolutely indispensable.
>
> Veridicality has been central to Loglan since the beginning.  To drop
> it would be to create a very different language.  Since natural
> languages do without veridicality, it is interesting to make it a part
> of this constructed language.
>
> Surely you are correct that for most people "veridicality is a
> rather...  uninteresting distinction".  But some of us find it very
> interesting and important, and would like to see what happens if the
> distinction gets built into the wiring of the grammar people think in.

Maybe I was wrong to link the ideas "veridicality is uninteresting"
and "specificity is crucial". I hold to the latter idea, but concede
that the former is too extreme. But I do find veridicality more
interesting for the problems it creates than for the problems it
solves: if you take the view, which one encounters in cognitive linguistics,
that the distinction between literal and figurative is blurry, or
even nonexistent, then veridicality is extremely problematic. My
students often disagree with me that "My income fell" is figurative.
Who decides whether "lo river anus" can truthfully refer to a rever
mouth? How does veridicality square with prototype semantics?

What does Nick say on this, I wonder.

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And