RT list: Re: A quick remark on the truth-conditional status of BUT

I feel that but is truth-conditional and I'll attempt to show this by the following example. I deliberately chose to use Islamists and terrorism in the example, and I must say right here that my use of this particular example is purely for the analysis of linguistic analysis.
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  Connectives such as but, so, however are standardly treated in RT as non-truth conditional. For example, consider (1-2).
              
              (1) Abdulah is not an Islamist but he is a terrorist.
              (2) He is an Islamist, so he is a terrorist.
   
  It is argued that (1) is true iff (3-4) are simultaneously true. That is, (1) is true if Abdulah is an Islamist and if he is not a terrorist.
   
              (3) Abdulah is not an Islamist.
              (4) Abdulah is a terrorist.
   
  However, it is also true that most Islamists who hear (1) would take offence and may even take legal or violent actions against the utterer (the incidents in Denmark some time ago should come back to readers' mind now). I can imagine the speaker’s argument would be like this: When I say (1), I am committed to the truth of (3-4), I am just stating two true states of affairs in the world that Abdulah is not an Islamist and that he is a terrorist. And I believe the Islamic world would certainly agree with me on the truth of these two stated of affairs. In addition, it is very easy to verify the truth of these two states of affairs. I can also imagine the prosecutors’s argument would run like this: we agree with the accused on the truth of the two states of affairs that Abdulah is not an Islamist and that he is a terrorist. However, he can express his commitment to the truth of these two states of affairs simply without the word but. Nevertheless, he did use but in his
 utterance and there must be some other truth lying behind his use of this particular word. This other truth is that by use of the word but, he establishes some link/connection/association between the Islam world and terrorism, specifically the Islam world is associated with terrorism. Linguistically speaking, the rationale or relevance of but lies in the fact that a link or connection has been established between the Islam world and terrorism. The offence or legal actions taken by the Islam world is to deny the truth of this link or connection: they would say it is not true that Islamists are associated with terrorism.
   
  ThusI think the truth conditions of (1) should be three-tonged as follows:
   
              (5) Abdulah is not an Islamist.
              (6) Abdulah is a terrorist.
              (7) There is a link/association between Islamist people and terrorism.
   
  In addition, Rouchota (1998? in Current issues in RT) claims that because but is non-truth conditional, a speaker who uses but cannot easily lay herself open to charges of untruthfulness. In particular, this means that whether (7) is true or false is not an issue to the speaker of (1) / none of the speaker’s business, or that she cannot be held responsible or be blamed for the truth or falsity of (7). I don’t see how this can be maintained. To establish/verify the truth status of (1) is not just to establish the truth status of (3) and (4) but to verify the truth status of (7) as well. Thus, a hearer may respond to (1) as follows.
   
              (7’) No, it’s not true. There is no link between Islamist people and terrorism.
   
  Similar arguments apply to (2) where so is used. Thus it seems that but, so do contribute to the truth conditions of the utterance.
   
  My signature today is: You can hide but you simply cannot deny!
   
   

       
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Received on Fri Jan 4 13:46:54 2008