Re: Logical?

Mike:
> Jim Grossmann <steven@...> wrote:
>
> >What does it mean for an artificial language to be "logical"?
>
> The following is my opinion.
And the following is mine on yours...

> A conlang is logical if all well-formed statements (though
> not questions and commands) are logical expressions.
I don't think you need to exclude questions and commands. Rather,
you need to enrich the vocabulary of logical expressions with a
set of illocutionary operators.

> An expression is logical if it evaluates to either true or
> false, but not both.  In plainer language, every expression
> in a loglang should *unambiguously* convey to the listener
> an idea about the way the world would have to be in order
> for the expression to be true.
This is too high and too inappropriate demand. For example,
the truth of a sentence containing a referential expression
cannot be determined until the referent is determined, but
the language itself does not determine the referent; when
I say "I saw him/the man score", there is nothing in the
sentence -- in the linguistically encoded/determined meaning
-- that tells you "him/the man" refers to David Beckham.
Rather, the reference is determined pragmatically, and the
sentence encodes an *incomplete/underspecified* logical
formula.

> All natural languages are logical for the most part, but not
> rigorously.  A language designed for logicality will pay
> careful attention to the logical implications of its
> constructions and will attempt to make the rules for logical
> evaluation straightforward and consistent.
"will tend to attempt" would be better.

> In order to be logical, a language is required to have
> an unambiguous syntax (i.e. all phrases are bound), an
> unambiguous lexicon (i.e. no homonyms are allowed; the
> morphology self-segregates), and unambiguous pragmatics
> (i.e. prescribed literalism--the speaker must say what
> he means; words are interpreted at face value).
Self-segreting morphology is not necessarily a requirement;
nonselfsegregating morphology will not necessarily result
in lexical ambuity, and nonselfsegregating words result
only in holistic ambiguity, not in specifically syntactic
ambiguity.

As for 'unambiguous pragmatics', much as I attribute it to
Livagian culture, it would be a cultural rather than a
strictly linguistic phenomenon, since a fully logical
language may nevertheless be used illogically.

> Many other things--such as a strong tendency towards
> regularity on various levels--can be and perhaps should
> be designed into a loglang, but they are not essential
> to logicality.
Indeed.

--And.

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