Re: veridicality in English

[Robin Turner <robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR>]

John wrote:
>Rather, I take the traditional view:  "the"/"a" do not encode
>specificity or veridicality except by accident.  What they primarily
>encode is definiteness (defined as "listener knows what's meant").
>
Absolutely! English articles have nothing to do with veridicality; they are
primarily discourse devices.  "The dog" means something like "an entity I
have in mind, which I regard as a particular member of the set of dogs, and
with which I assume you are familiar".  If I say "I'm going to take the dog
for a walk", you assume, ceteris paribus, that I really have a real dog,
but this comes from the normal rules of discourse, not my use of "the".  I
could actually have a pet alligator, which I jokingly refer to as "the dog".


Robin Turner

Bilkent Universitesi,
IDMYO,
Ankara,
Turkey.

<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8309>