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Re: request

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 23:06
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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Jake X <starvingpoet@...>