Re: A question of semantics

This, what you're talking about here, gets me into a tangled knot of
thoughts, which I'm going to try to disentangle.  I'm not sure how much
of these thoughts are relevant to what you're talking about.

First, your example reminds me of a specific instance where I've never
found adequate words to express the kind of certainty/uncertainty of an
experience.  I'm thinking of an experience that we've probably all had,
though I sometimes think it occurs to me with a higher-than-average
frequency (often several times daily): the experience of "seeing"
someone, only to look again and find it's someone you don't know.
Let's say the person I didn't actually see is called Jenny.

The problem is, I can't say "I saw Jenny", because it wasn't actually
her.

I also can't say "I thought I saw Jenny", because that makes it all
sound too intentional - like I actually believed I saw Jenny till I
looked again and saw it wasn't her.  But that's also wrong, because
after "seeing" Jenny, I was aware that, given the briefness of the
"seeing", and the frequency with which I mistakenly "see" people, it
most likely wasn't her.

If I say "I saw someone who looked like Jenny", that makes it sound
like I knew all along that it wasn't Jenny, but that I saw someone and
observed that they bore a resemblance to Jenny.

Another interesting kind of uncertainty: remembering an event, but not
recalling of the main character in it is yourself or someone else.  I
find this occasionally -  I will be telling a friend about something
that I remember, and I will remember the event, and that I was present,
but I can't remember what role I played, if I was a main character, or
just an observer.

Estel

 --- Nick Maclaren wrote:
(...)

> In "I saw the rabbit", it is easy to express an uncertainty of
> detail on "rabbit", such as by "something rabbitlike".  Similarly,
> one can express uncertainty of event on the whole sentence by
> prefixing it by "I think that".  But how do you express
> uncertainty of either detail or event on "saw" in a way that is
> practical for use in speech?
>
> "I either saw or otherwise perceived the rabbit".  But even that
> does not distinguish "seeing or hearing" from "seeing or having a
> (perhaps mistaken) visual impression of".  And what about "saw or
> had a visual memory of (perhaps a vivid dream)"?  All of these are
> uncertainty concepts that are very hard to express in English, but
> which I find that I want to use.

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