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From: Mikko <mikko.levanto@iki.fi>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: The Foundation of Linguistic truth is stipulated relations between finite strings
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 09:41:53 +0300
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On 2024-09-16 11:57:11 +0000, olcott said:

> On 9/16/2024 2:54 AM, Mikko wrote:
>> On 2024-09-15 17:09:34 +0000, olcott said:
>> 
>>> On 9/15/2024 3:32 AM, Mikko wrote:
>>>> On 2024-09-14 14:01:31 +0000, olcott said:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 9/14/2024 3:26 AM, Mikko wrote:
>>>>>> On 2024-09-13 14:38:02 +0000, olcott said:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 9/13/2024 6:52 AM, Mikko wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 2024-09-04 03:41:58 +0000, olcott said:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> The Foundation of Linguistic truth is stipulated relations
>>>>>>>>> between finite strings.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> The only way that we know that "cats" <are> "animals"
>>>>>>>>> (in English) is the this is stipulated to be true.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> *This is related to*
>>>>>>>>> Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of
>>>>>>>>> natural language that sees meaning (or at least the meaning
>>>>>>>>> of assertions) as being the same as, or reducible to, their
>>>>>>>>> truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally
>>>>>>>>> associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out
>>>>>>>>> for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic
>>>>>>>>> theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic.
>>>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-conditional_semantics
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> *Yet equally applies to formal languages*
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> No, it does not. Formal languages are designed for many different
>>>>>>>> purposes. Whether they have any semantics and the nature of the
>>>>>>>> semantics of those that have is determined by the purpose of the
>>>>>>>> language.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Formal languages are essentially nothing more than
>>>>>>> relations between finite strings.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Basically a formal language is just a set of strings, usually defined
>>>>>> so that it is easy to determine about each string whether it belongs
>>>>>> to that subset. Relations of strings to other strings or anything else
>>>>>> are defined when useful for the purpose of the language.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes.
>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Thus, given T, an elementary theorem is an elementary
>>>>>>> statement which is true.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> That requires more than just a language. Being an elementary theorem means
>>>>>> that a subset of the language is defined as a set of the elementary theorems
>>>>> 
>>>>> a subset of the finite strings are stipulated to be elementary theorems.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> or postulates, usually so that it easy to determine whether a string is a
>>>>>> member of that set, often simply as a list of all elementary theorems.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes.
>>>>> 
>>>>>>> https://www.liarparadox.org/Haskell_Curry_45.pdf
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Some of these relations between finite strings are
>>>>>>> elementary theorems thus are stipulated to be true.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> No, that conficts with the meanings of those words. Certain realtions
>>>>>> between strings are designated as inference rules, usually defined so
>>>>>> that it is easy to determine whether a given string can be inferred
>>>>>> from given (usually one or two) other strings. Elementary theorems
>>>>>> are strings, not relations between strings.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> One elementary theorem of English is the {Cats} <are> {Animals}.
>>>> 
>>>> There are no elementary theorems of English
>>> 
>>> There are billions of elementary theorems in English of
>>> this form: finite_string_X <is a> finite_string_Y
>>> I am stopping here at your first huge mistake.
>> 
>> They are not elementary theorems of English. They are English expressions
>> of claims that that are not language specific.
>> 
>>> It is hard to step back and see that "cats" and "animals"
>>> never had any inherent meaning.
>> 
>> Those meanings are older that the words "cat" and "animal" and the
>> word "animal" existed before there was any English language.
> 
> Yet they did not exist back when language was the exact
> same caveman grunt.

Nothing is known about languages before 16 000 BC and very little
about languages before 4000 BC.

Words change ofer time so a word does not have well defined beginning.
If you regard "cat" as a different word from "catt" 'male cat' and
"catte" 'female cat' then it is a fairly new word, if the same then
it is older than the English language.

> There was point point in time when words came into
> existence.

That is not the same time for all words and also depends on what you
consider a new word and what just a variant of an existing one. Even
now people use sonds that are not considered words and sounds that
can be regardeded, depending on one's opinion, words or non-words.

-- 
Mikko