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.

 =========================================================================
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

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