Logic and language WAS Re: Contradictory negation

Ooh, my ears are tickling on this one!  "No" in loglan
functions like placing ~ at the beginning of a nested
premise in symbolic logic.  Actually, a subject I very
much want to pursue in graduate work is the gap
between interpretations of logical connectors in logic
and in natural languages.

Here are a couple of examples of this.  If I say, "I
went to the store and bought some milk," the full
meaning of this sentence cannot be captured in
symbolic logic by a literal interpretation.  This is
because I really mean, "I went to the store *and then*
bought some milk."  Conventional logic schemes cannot
take into account this temporal factor, because it is
not carried by the connector *.  Similarly, symbolic
logic cannot deal with the subjunctive.  A translation
of "If I were you, then I wouldn't go" wouldn't yield
the same meaning because the connective --> doesn't
carry a subjunctive sense.

I would love to pursue this subject further with the
group, discussing the meanings of the connectives and
how they play out in your conlangs.

Clint


--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
> In Loglan, there is a particle "no" which when
> placed at the beginning of
> a sentence, expresses the falsity of the (rest of
> the) sentence.
> In this position, it can be glossed as "It is false
> that":
>
>         No ra kangu ga blabi
>         [false] all dog [separator] white
>         It is false that all dogs are white.
>
> Lojban has a similar particle, with slightly
> different morphology ("na")
> and very different syntax.  It is canonically placed
> before the verb,
> but still has the effect of negating the entire
> sentence.  Thus:
>
>         ro gerku na blabi
>         all dog [false] white
>
> does not mean "All dogs are not white" but rather
> "It is false that all dogs
> are white", i.e. "Not all dogs are white", i.e.
> "Some dogs are not white".
>
> Are there any natlangs which have negation particles
> that work like Lojban's?
>
> --
> John Cowan    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> <jcowan@...>
>     "Any legal document draws most of its meaning
> from context. A telegram
>     that says 'SELL HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES IBM
> SHORT' (only 190 bits in
>     5-bit Baudot code plus appropriate headers) is
> as good a legal document
>     as any, even sans digital signature." --me

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Replies