Re: Logical?

Meep! I don't get the idea of "logical languages" at all. Surely 'logic'
relates to the structure of statements and arguments, not the language that
these statements and arguments are phrased in. Using the old
premiss/syllogism standby "all men are mortal/x is a man/x is therefore
mortal" is true no matter what language you translate it into, whether
real-world, con, aux or otherwise.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "And Rosta" <a-rosta@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 11:23 PM
Subject: 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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