History: veridical

Source of version: 2 (current)

A veridical bridi has truthconditions that contribute to the truthconditions of the sentence that contains the bridi. A nonveridical bridi has truthconditions that do not contribute to the truthconditions of the sentence that contains the bridi. --((And)) ''Give an example?'' Since the unmarked case is veridical, I'll exemplify nonveridicals: *A Lojban example: ''mi viska le gerku'' means "I see it (it's a dog)", where the sentence as a whole is true regardless of whether it is or isn't a dog. The information "(it's a dog)" is added in order to help the hearer identify which thing is being referred to. *An English example: ''That dog over there has shat on the grass'' means "It (it's a dog) has shat on the grass", and is true whether or not it really is a dog. It could be a fox, for example. But it helps the hearer to identify what the speaker is referring to. --((And)) ''Do you really mean to say that I can look at the Eiffel Tower, state "mi viska le gerku", and yet the sentence is true? Perhaps these examples need a little tuning. --xod'' *If ''le gerku'' refers to the Eiffel tower, then yes, that sentence would be true. But the hearer is entitled to presume that the speaker is describing the referent as a dog in order to help the hearer identify what it is that ''le gerku'' refers to. English (definite noun phrases) works this way too, I promise. --((And)). Refgram 6.2: ;:The specific purpose of ``le'' is twofold. [[...] Second, it also indicates that the speaker is merely describing the things he or she has in mind as markets, without being committed to the truth of that description. [[...] ;:Example 2.3 [[le nanmu cu ninmu] is not self-contradictory in Lojban, because ``le nanmu'' merely means something or other which, for my present purposes, I choose to describe as a man, whether or not it really is a man. The examples need no tuning at all: non-veridical means non-veridical, and yes, you can look at the Eiffel Tower and call it ''le gerku''. If we are wrong, we have been wrong for the past 10 years, and the baselined grammar is wrong too. The proviso ;:In all descriptions with ''le'', the listener is presumed to either know what I have in mind or else not to be concerned at present (perhaps I will give more identifying details later). In particular, I might be pointing at the supposed man or men: Example 2.3 would then be perfectly intelligible, since ''le nanmu'' merely clarifies that I am pointing at the supposed man, not at a landscape, or a nose, which happens to lie in the same direction. does not annul this, because it places a constraint on speaker cooperativeness, not on whether the sentence per se is true or not. A speaker can be non-cooperative without lying. -- nitcion ''So then logically ''le broda'' just reduces to ''da''?! I think we need a new logic. -- Adam'' *Absolutely not. ''da'' is an existentially quantified variable. ''le broda'' is specific. So it reduces not to ''da'' but to ''ko'a'', or, if you don't believe in antecedentless ko'a, then it reduces to ''le du''. --((And)) Sorry, people (well, not ''that'' sorry); that's how Lojban works, and Loglan before it. ''le'' has been claimed to be non-veridical for the past thirty years, and veridically does indeed reduce just to ''da''. If you don't like non-veridical (i.e. pragmatic) articles, feel free to place ''le'' in your ((Stuff to be removed from the language|Index Prohibitorum Verborum)), and use ''bi'u'' and ''lo'' or whatever instead. (And frankly, no, we don't really need another thirty years negotiating a new logic.) -- nitcion *Veridicality doesn't reduce to ''da''. For example, ''le du ku noi gerku'' doesn't reduce to ''da'' but does describe the referent veridically as a dog. Essentially, veridicality is orthogonal to the +/-specific contrast, but nonveridicality is simply pointless with nonspecifics and hence gets associated exclusively with specifics. And note that, as I showed abouve, there are workaround ways to do specifics without nonveridicality, viz. ''ko'a noi ke'a broda'' and ''le du ku noi gerku''. I think people wanting to be able to avoid nonveridicality is pretty legitimate. ((--And))