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At 11:37 AM 10/24/02 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
pycyn@hidden.email scripsit:> One case that seems like the ones I have taken as bare conditionals but that > does not seem to work well, "I am a novelist" in the sense "I write novels."> Not writing novels does not (by itself) count against the claim, but > explaining the test has so far escaped me. I think this is a confusion. For me, "I am a novelist who doesn't write novels" is a flat contradiction, right along with "I am a cook who doesn't prepare food", "I am a painter who's never touched a brush", "I am an illiterate reader", etc. etc. Pace And, I don't know any way to become a lion-tamer without taming, or participating in the taming, of at least one actual lion, any more than one can become an automobile driver by reading a book.
Warning that I haven't been following the discussion, and hence may be missing all of the context for this:
It seems to me that the existence and allowance for potential tense (which can be elliptical) requires that one can be a potential novelist who has not actually written any novels, etc. Of the above therefore, only an illiterate reader seems to be impossible, and then only if one assumes that someone illiterate isn't potentially literate.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org