Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Negation?

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Thursday, July 8, 1999, 17:26
Ed Heil wrote:

> The concept of "not X" in its absolutely pure form, bereft of knowing > any particular Y which implies "not X", seems to me (at least right, > now, as I think about these things) to be something that exists only in > the realm of language (or more properly, it is something that exists in > our conceptual apparatus only as a result of a particular kind of > linguistic manipulation).
How about negations of perception statements? "I do not now see a unicorn" can't be expressed as "Someone sees a unicorn somewhere else" or "I saw/will see a unicorn at some other time" (and these statements are fishy anyway, since "else" and "other" mean "not this one" and "not now"). Yet it is a truth whose expression may be important; expressing it by enumerating all the other things in the visible field doesn't cut it. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge / Politzer