Re: Skolem Again

Chris Menzel <cmenzel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>On 7 Oct 2005 10:38:21 -0700, William of Ockham
><d3uckner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
....
>>
>> What is ungrammatical about "The same theory must have the same
>> meaning"? Absolutely standard English.
>
>Not the English I speak.

Depends on what you throw into the "grammar" of English and
what you throw into the "pragmatics". The phrase _the same_
has deictic import: it points to something which a writer or
speaker who is playing fair either has already introduced
into the discourse, or is promising to introduce into the
discourse, or can fairly assume is (already) salient to the
other party or parties to the discourse. In a free-standing
sentence, bare of any context, using _the same_ is unfair.
A list of purported axioms isn't a very common candidate for
"discourse" (and also carries, or should carry, a little more
responsibility *not* to hide assumptions under any rugs),
so when "2. The same theory must have the same meaning." appears
in such a list the claim that it is "Absolutely standard
English." is more than a bit dicey: it may be "grammatical"
on some accounts of grammar but it's not "pragmatically
correct".

At least, that would be my naive post-Gricean story about
what's going on. But I'm just talkin'.

Lee Rudolph
.

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