Re: meanings not in english

Steg Belsky wrote:


> I'm just going by the intention of the person telling the untruth.
> Hmm... a language that distinguishes both intention and result?
And there is, of course, several levels of intention:

So, in the whole sense of lying and telling the true, there is a first
distinction:

tell somthing right / tell something wrong.

When you tell something wrong you might:

be aware that it is wrong / believe that it is true / be speculating

(this first is the general notion of "to lie")

When you ara aware that it is wrong, you might:

have / not have an intention to deceive

When you have an intention to deceive, you might:

want to protect from the true / want to convince in the falsity

(the first one are the white lies)

When you want to convice into falsity, you might want:

to do wrong to sby / to benefit yourself (but not mean wrong on others)

(I guess this is your contrast between "lie" and "sketch" or the difference
between malignus/officitius)

When you don't have the intention to deceive, you might:

ensure that the listener is aware enough to know the true / or not.

When you believe that it is true, you might:

have the capacity to know the true / be impeded to know the true

When you have the capacity to know the true, you might ignore it because:

the true does not benefit* you (denial) / you simply did not pay atention

(some how the first is also "a lie": an uncontious one and a self lie, but a
lie).

*: benefit might not be the word. the fact is that if you could see the true
but you tell yourself that it is false, because the true is painful, or the
true is charmful but does not justify your self-pitty, etc., all this is
included in this cathegory.

When you are impeded to know the true, this might be the result of:

you have been deceived by someone / you have been deceived by evidence / you
don't have enough data

(The diference between: tell wrong, believing is true by not having enough
data v/s tell wrong speculating is that, when you speculate, you are
contious of not having enough data)

When you have been decieved by someone, this might be because you were:

intentionally decieved (by a lie) / uncontiously decieved (by an error).

Of course, we could make this distinctions further fine by including all
sorts of lies/sketches/white lies, etc.

If you are wrong by speculating, you might:

be trying to look smart / be just trying to understand and voicing it

(in the first one, some kind of deceiveing is intended, so it is a lie)

If you are not trying to look smart when speculating , you might:

ensure that the listener is aware that you are speculating / or not.

Well, back on telling things right, you:

are aware they are right / believe it is wrong / be speculating.

When you tell somethng right believing it is wrong, you are lying and all
the subdivisions of lying apply. It just happen that your lie is the true.

When you are right while speculating, well, it is just speculation as when
you are wrong. It just happen that, by chance, you got it right. ... well,
not exactly. You might have a good criterium to be right even if you are not
complete conscious on the whole true.

When you are right and aware that you are right... well, I do not know if
you need further elaboration on intentions an results.

About results, well, this is somehow appart from the intention of the
agent/subject of the verb, so probably the verb does not have to make those
distinctions.

I don't know if a language would benefit from all these fine distinctions:
too many words to choose the right one? Some times, with some few words and
a few modifiers (adjective/adverbs) would make things easier. The divisions
does not have to calc English.

In my idiolect (Spanish - Andean Colombian - Bogotá - upper-mid class
professional) I would call a "mentira" (a lie) if there is an intentention
to deceive, either oneself or any other, or even if you are a victim of
deceiving (in the later case you are not lying but perpetuating a lie or
living in a lie).

So "mentir" is to tell a lie in the previous sense. Contrast with "engañar"
wich means to deceive. "engañar" shows intention, so if you are perpetuating
a lie you are not "engañando".

Well...

-- Carlos Th