Re: veridicality

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

la'o gy Bob Chassel gy cusku di'e

> 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.

The experiment may or may not be interesting (besides the question of
whether people think in any grammar), but you won't be able to conclude
much from the way things are now.

Let me be metaphorical. Say you want to investigate the effect that
adding a strawberry has on the melting rate of ice-cream. So, you
place a strawberry in one cup of icecream, and nothing in another cup
of ice-cream, and then you place one of the cups in the shade and the
other directly under the sun. Will you be able to conclude anything
about the effect of the strawberry? In the same way, if {lo} has
quantifier {su'o} and {le} has quantifier {ro}, then you can be sure
that this distinction will overwhelm any subtle distinction in
veridicality. Especially so in a logical language, where quantification
is central to the meaning of claims.

>     ...he saw "at least one brown dog". In no way did he tell us which
>     dog he saw. If we were in a room, and there was a brown dog with
>     us, we still wouldn't know whether he was talking about that brown
>     dog or not.  (Unless {lo} is specific, in which case it would
>     almost surely be that dog, but that would mean practically the
>     same as {mi pu viska le bunre gerku}.)
>
> You are right, the grammar does not tell us which dog he saw.  That is
> not the primary concern.  The basis of the conversation is different.
> The question for the Lojban listener is whether the utterance is true.
> It is true if the brown dog is a real dog.

To understand better the truth value, consider its negation: {mi na pu
viska lo bunre gerku}. This means that it is not the case that I saw
at least one brown dog, i.e. I didn't see any brown dogs.

Now consider the negation of the specific case. {mi na pu viska le bunre
gerku}. This means that it is not the case that I saw the brown dog.
The brown dog in question, that is. It says nothing about whether or
not I saw other brown dogs.

Specificity vs non-specificity has strong implications, for example in
the case above when you negate a claim. Veridicality is only an issue
in the specific case, and even then it doesn't really change the logical
aspects of the claim.

My point of view is this:

Saying that {lo} is veridical is almost a triviality. Because of the
fact that it is non-specific, it needs to be veridical or we lose any
connection with meaning.

Allowing {le} to be non-veridical is convenient, but in most cases
{le broda} will have as referent a really-is broda, and you can't
replace it with {lo broda} and get the same meaning, so we don't
really have a guaranteed veridical specific, nor do we need one, in
my opinion.

Jorge