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

Dear Minh Dang,

I'm not sure if I follow your argument:

On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 05:46:32AM -0800, Minh Dang wrote:
> 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.
> -----------------
>
> 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.
> > (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.

All that your discussion so far shows is that (7) is a (most likely)
strongly communicated implication by a speaker uttering (1). It
doesn't show that (7) is among the truth-conditions of (1). In fact,
your example (7') shows that (7) is cancellable, that is, cannot be
among the truth-conditions of (1). Hence `but' in this example cannot
be truth-conditional. Am I missing something?

--Christoph

>
> 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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>
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> References
>
> Visible links
> 1. http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51438/*http:/www.yahoo.com/r/hs

-- 
Dr. Christoph Unger
SIL International 
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