Re: veridicality in grammar

[David Bowen <dmb@ironwood.cray.com>]

>I am using `grammatical' here in the sense that fluent speakers of a
>language will tell you whether an utterance is grammatical.  For
>example, speakers of English will tell you that the following is
>well formed:
>
>    Green ideas sleep furiously.
>
>They consider the following to be ill formed:
>
>    *Sleep green furiously ideas.
>
>Also, English speakers will tell you the following is ill formed:
>
>     *Green ideas sleeps furiously.
>
>Veridicality is not a criterion for whether English utterances are
>grammatical.  The following is well formed, even if false in the
>context of the current conversation:
>
>    Tomorrow, Hannibal will cross the Alps.
>
>Lojban is different.  The following is a grammatical use of {lo} if
>and only if the cat seen is `for real' in the context of the current
>conversation:
>
>    .i la dgorj ca ca'a viska lo mlatu
>
>However, the utterance is not grammatical if the cat is not `for
>real'.  If the cat is not `for real', but is something you are
>designating as a cat, then the grammatical categorizer is {le}.

   I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree here, though my disagreement
may be a disagreement about the definition of well-formed.  My definition is
that "well-formed" is equivalent to "is syntactically correct".  In other
words, if I can build a parse tree for it using the current Lojban grammar
it's well-formed.  I would categorize errors in the usage of "lo" and "le"
as semantic errors.  ".i la dgorj ca ca'a viska lo mlatu" will parse whether
of not "lo mlatu" really is a cat.  But it will be meaningless if "lo mlatu"
isn't a cat.

   Since veridicality isn't usually a concern in English it's difficult to
construct an analog.  References to "deciduous pines", "colorless green
objects" or "sunsets in the eastern sky" would be possible examples of
syntactically valid phrases that lack meaning.  I'm sure others can construct
other examples.

David Bowen