[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: [engelang] Xorban Development



On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 6:15 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
> Jorge Llambías, On 25/08/2012 21:56:
> > On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 4:13 PM, And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
> >> Jorge Llambías, On 25/08/2012 01:04:
> >>>
> >>> Hmm... OK, then I guess this makes the syntactic rules simpler, but
> >>> the rules for when it's appropriate to use an illocutionary operator
> >>> somewhat more complicated.
> >>
> >> What are examples of complications? Why not just put illocutionaries in
> >> the class of predicates?
> >
> > Is it meaningful, for example, to negate such a predicate? The grammar
> > allows any predicate to be negated, but I'm not sure what it would
> > mean to say "I don't hereby command you to do so and so"? Or "I hereby
> > could command you to do so and so".
>
> Good point! Can we appeal to pragmatics?

That's what I meant by complicating the rules for when it's
appropriate to use it. :)


> > I think "Is it lunchtime yet, because I'm getting hungry" could be
> > analysed as two statements:
> >
> > (1) I hereby ask whether it is lunchtime yet.
> > (2) I hereby assert that the reason I ask whether it is lunchtime yet
> > is because I'm getting hungry.
> >
> > We mangle both into one utterance so as to not have to repeat the
> > portion that is common to both statements, but logically they don't
> > really belong in the same statement if I'm right that only one
> > illocutionary force per statement is allowed.
>
> How about "hello again"? That doesn't seem to me to involve an
> illocutionary assertion in addition to an illocutionary salutation.

I would say that would be a single statement: "I hereby express
greetings to you again", "I hereby re-express greetings to you". I
don't think the illocutionary there needs to be within the scope of
again.

> Furthermore, not all illocutionaries are sentence-level. At a
> lexical/phrasal level are "fucking", "surprisingly", and so on.

OK. Perhaps those deserve a separate treatment, similar to that of
noi-clauses or parentheticals.

> Quantifiers are not the only things outside the scope of the
> illocutionary. So are conventional implicatures (e.g. the contrast bit of
> _but_).

All right, but we don't have "but" in Xorban yet.

mu'o mi'e xorxes