----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: Request
> Quoting Jake X <starvingpoet@...>:
>
> > > I think there's a distinction to be made between the literal
> > > rendering of a sentence with or without pronoun in such languages
> > > (in which the "meaning" would be identical) and the illocutionary
> > > force which each is meant to carry. In formal semantics, "meaning"
> > > describes the former condition of identity, not the latter sense
> > > of pragmatics.
> >
> > So then couldn't the difference between "We eat" and "we do eat" work
for
> > this exercise?
>
> Right. Both can be rendered informally as "There is an x and a y
> such that x eats and y eats and x is not equal to y and ((x = me and
> y = you) or (x = you and y = me))". The difference between them lies
> in the discourse pragmatics of each.
Sounds pretty formal to me. ;)
> ==========================================================================
> Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
> Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
> University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
> 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
> Chicago, IL 60637
Jake