Re: Logic in Languages

En réponse à Christopher Bates <christopher.bates@...>:

>
> Do any natural languages adopt a different structure? For instance:
>
> and X Y
>
Probably. Since the structure 'X Y and' exists and is quite common, I don't see
why the other one wouldn't...

>
> but it seems to me that if the operation comes before its two
> arguments
> as in "or Z and X Y" or "and X or Y Z" then which is meant is
> unambiguous. I know latin has some strange ways of doing things like
> anding... like adding "que" onto the end of the second argument.
Indeed. But it's not that strange. It's actually a very common way to mark
coordination in PIE. Sanskrit had that too (clitic -ca) and Old Greek too IIRC.
So it was a construction that was common in all PIE dialects, and even the main
form of coordination in PIE (coordination consisting in putting a word between
two others doesn't come from PIE, but comes from independent innovations from
the languages that developped it, using adverbs that first meant "also"
or "then").

 Latin
> also has a way of indication xor... do many natural languages make the
> distinction between or and xor?
English does too, but it does that using a correlative construction "either...
or..." (another very common way of coordinating words is by using a correlative
construction adding a word or clitic to each coordinated component. Usually the
first or last one is not the same as the others, but it's not always so).

 What about operations such as nand? I
> don't think we really have anything in English that approximates
> nand...
> you'd have to say "either X or Y or neither"... for nor "either both
> or
> neither" etc. What language has the most words for such things?
I don't think those are very natural. In language negation seems always to be
more marked than affirmation, and in negation many oppositions get neutralised.
Basically, languages don't make as many distinctions in negative terms than in
affirmative terms. So having exact negative forms of "and" and/or "or" is not
very natural. Also, those terms you're referring to are logical negations, and
negation in natural languages doesn't behave like negation in logic. Latin for
instance had "neque" and "neve", but those mean "and... not" and "or... not". I
don't know a language which can apply negation to the coordinator itself.

Logic in its mathematical approach is not a natural feature but an artificial
system based on some explicitely defined principles (which is why you can
develop other logical systems), a part of pure mathematics. It doesn't surprise
me that languages don't follow it completely.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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