knowledge

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

Nice to be back after a long absence owing to my e-mail account getting
accidentally closed by the university's computer centre.  I was amazed to
find everybody still beavering away at the djuno/krici question!

>Thoight of another example for Jorge to tear apart.
>
>The following seems to me a good example of "know" with a subjective
>truth, and it even is language based %^)
>
>John knows that in English it is improper to split an infinitive, but I
>know that this is false.
>
>I believe that the main verb being "know" renders the meaning different
>than using "opine" or even "consider" (whjoich in this case would usually
>be interpreted to mean "opine"), because opining speaks to the impropriety,
>whereas knowing speaks to it being a rule of propriety.  My claim to it being
>false speaks to my knowing that the rule is in fact often broken in
>perfectly acceptable English speech.

Perhaps, however, the first "know" is ironic in this case - when I imagine
someone saying it I hear an intonation on the first "know" equivalent to
quotation marks, but that could just be my imagination running loose.  I
agree that it's perfectly acceptable Enlish speech, but I would be somewhat
surprised if I found it in, say, a journal article.


>
Robin Turner

Bilkent Universitesi,
IDMYO,
Ankara,
Turkey.

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