What's a sentence?

[Fasteriskhead]

It occurs to me that I've never actually started a [i]thread[/i] on the dumb kinds of things I sometimes write about. Usually I just come and invade someone else's. So, quid pro quo, I guess I have to try one of these things sometime (and the drier the topic, the better). Recently I've been dealing with problems relating to sentences - or "propositions," if for some reason you prefer the stricter, stick-up-the-rear academic term - and I thought I'd bring them around here to see if anyone had any fresh thoughts. Or, more likely, if anyone wanted to make fun of me. This whole thread could be a disaster (or complete non-event), but here we go.

First off, I'm not going to work on why it is that some sentences make sense ("Smith smokes cigarettes") while others that are grammatically similar do not ("quadruplicity drinks procrastination"). I'm also going to skip how it is that saying or writing certain things can have [i]effects[/i] (for example, saying "I promise to clean my room" or "I pronounce you man and wife"), or the communicative role of language in society. Those are interesting questions, but I'm gonna keep it simple for now.

So, start with the example from above, "Smith smokes cigarettes." This is a very simple sentence composed of a subject (here a proper noun), a transitive verb, and an object. Grammatically it's valid, but it is also meant to express a [i]fact[/i]. When I read this sentence I take it to be saying something: that Smith's a smoker. The sentence produces a kind of picture of what's happening, and that picture is the sentence's [i]meaning[/i]. We know, from taking in the sentence and getting its meaning, that - for example - Smith probably smells like smoke, he's going to have health problems if he doesn't quit, and so on. All of that's pretty obvious, yes? The problem is figuring out where that meaning (the representational picture) comes from, and how it [i]connects[/i] to the sentence that's supposed to be presenting it.

I said before that "Smith smokes cigarettes" has a subject, verb, and object. So, it's possible that the meaning of a sentence comes from the combination of all the words composing it. "Smith" - a person; "smoking" - an action where some substance is set on fire, held up to the mouth, and inhaled; "cigarettes" - paper-rolled tobacco with filters. By combining the individual meanings of these three words, you get the meaning of the sentence.

Except that this runs into problems. Take another sentence like "Snoop smoked the punk" - "smoking" appears as the verb here as well, but it's a different kind of smoking. I'm probably not saying that Snoop lit the punk on fire and then inhaled him. It's [i]possible[/i] that that's what happened, but more likely what I'm saying is that Snoop shot a guy. If both "Smith smokes cigarettes" and "Snoop smoked the punk" are allowed their obvious meanings, then "smoke" has to be able to mean different things. But then, in each individual case, how do I tell when it means one thing and when it means something else? If I listen to a sentence like "Smith smokes cigarettes," do I have to quickly rifle through the catalog of all the possible meanings for each word and then select the combination that's most likely in order to understand the sentence? But I don't usually have that kind of experience. Usually the meaning of a sentence is something obvious to me. So is it an [i]unconscious[/i] process? But then, why is it - in the few cases where I DO have a confusion - that this confusion rises to the surface? (if I was choosing everything unconsciously, why wouldn't that faculty just pick one word or the other?) And unconscious or not, what would even be the basis for choosing between one take or another? ("one makes more sense than the others" - what does that mean?)

All of this indicates an opposite solution, namely that the meaning of a sentence is something [i]independent[/i] from word meaning. Words, in fact, [i]have[/i] no meaning on their own. There might be a general [i]convention[/i] about what they mean, but actually this is an illusion. A word like "dog" never has any set meaning, and its meaning will change depending on whether the sentence is "the dog is a four-legged mammal" or "that dog hit me over the head and stole my money." "Smith smokes cigarettes" and "Snoop smoked the punk" may share the same word, but since they're two different sentences (two different wholes) the shared element comes to nothing. Each sentence has to be learned and understood individually, in isolation from all others.

But this has problems too. It's not economical, for one thing. Suppose I knew the meaning of a sentence like "Smith smokes cigarettes" - if meaning is unique to each sentence, then I would be putting just as much work into learning very similar sentences (like "Smith smokes cigarettes after dinner," "Smith smokes Camel cigarettes") etc. as learning one which has nothing in common at all (like "Elizabeth is the queen of England"). But again, this doesn't seem to fit with experience: I find sentences similar to the ones I already know easier to learn than ones that are totally different. Furthermore, I can often understand or make up totally unique sentences from pre-given elements ("Smith smoked a cigarette after the dog stole his money") and have them mean something. Not all sentences are equal; there has to be something meaningful in the words themselves.

So we're at an impasse. Sentence meanings don't seem to happen because we make the right guesses about what their words mean; on the other hand, sentence meanings don't seem to be totally independent from word meanings. And it gets worse. Take a sentence like "Oswald assassinated Kennedy": as before, we can break up the sentence into individual elements, "Oswald," "Kennedy," and "assassination" (for now, ignore the problem of multiple meanings). We can look at each word, even the verb, as a [i]logical subject[/i] expressing a particular concept (Kennedy was the man who was the 35th president, he was elected in 1960, etc.; ditto for Oswald and assassination). We can even synthesize these elements into a single subject, "Oswald's assassination of Kennedy," which also expresses a concept. The problem is that just saying "Oswald's assassination of Kennedy" [i]isn't itself a sentence[/i]; all it is is a concept, one which doesn't say whether it's actually a fact. It only becomes a sentence when one says that the assassination [i]happened[/i] (or didn't happen). So, in analyzing it down to its contents, we've somehow eliminated whatever it was that made it a sentence in the first place! This means that even if it's possible to determine with complete precision what the conceptual meanings of individual words in a sentence are, there still has to be something unanalyzable in the sentence as a whole which [i]asserts[/i] the sentence, which says that it's a [i]fact[/i] and not just a possibility floating around in logical space. This is a big problem.

There's a famous Indian parable about a chariot (it's adapted by just about everyone, most famously the Buddhists). The point is that you can't find the "chariotness" of a chariot by looking at its individual parts or even the sum of those parts, but a chariot missing too many those parts also ceases being a chariot. The relationship between a chariot and its parts turns out to be a very odd one. Sentences seem to have a similar problem. Just because I can pull together a bunch of words, even [i]compatible[/i] ones (grammatically and conceptually), doesn't mean I'm automatically given a sentence. There's some little sliver, a kind of logical gremlin, separating a sentence from the sum of the words in it. Obviously there has to be some relationship between sentences and their words (more accurately, between sentence meaning and word meaning), but [i]what the hell is it?[/i] How do you make the jump from one to the other?

Anyways, this is a problem I've been banging my head against lately, and I thought I would bring it around to anyone who was interested in reading a few pages on this stuff. Dangling the hook, or whatever. Talking about how sentences work isn't going to cure cancer or tell you what the meaning of life is, but I think it's an interesting puzzle worth talking about.

[Dagger]

[quote name='Fasteriskhead']All of this indicates an opposite solution, namely that the meaning of a sentence is something [i]independent[/i] from word meaning. Words, in fact, [i]have[/i] no meaning on their own.[/QUOTE]
Words have no fixed meaning on their own. The same goes for sentences, i.e., the meaning of a sentence is something independent from the meaning of the paragraph or chapter or novel it's found in. It seems like most of the problems you have defining a sentence arise because you keep circling around the idea of a pure, context-free sentence. But I'd say that the leap from sentences to paragraphs is at least as big as the leap from words to sentences. (And I don't want to even think about having to define what constitutes a pure, context-free word.)

Fragments capped off with periods that have no logical (or grammatical) meaning by themselves can make perfect sense as part of a longer work of prose. Are they disqualified as sentences because they can't stand on their own?

~Dagger~

[2010DigitalBoy]

[color=darkorange]*will edit with reply when I find the will to read that unholy, massive, incredible post and am finished reveling in the irony that I was playing shodow of the colossos before I came on*[/color]

[Umbra II]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Here's a head turner if I ever saw one. Before I even attempt to come up with a complete responce to your query, let me first form some of my ideas by nibbling at a few pieces of what you brought up.

[QUOTE]
Quote:Fasteriskhead
There's a famous Indian parable about a chariot (it's adapted by just about everyone, most famously the Buddhists). The point is that you can't find the "chariotness" of a chariot by looking at its individual parts or even the sum of those parts, but a chariot missing too many those parts also ceases being a chariot.
Quote:
[/QUOTE]

Probably, you know who Plato is, and probably, you know his theory on 'forms' and 'objects'. Let me just put it down. A class (my word for form, and as a computer science student learning java, it's the natural choice for me) as we humans are able to understand it is nothing but a list of traits, concepts mostly we define. In order for a chariot to be a chariot, it (being an object and therefore an instance of a class we humans defined) must fufill certain criteria. Missing a door or a wheel? It is still a chariot. But if you take away everything except the wheel, no one who knows what a chariot is would call it a chariot. This is connected to your problem if you think of the chariot as your sentence and the smaller parts as words.

Next: what's a wheel, anyway? In order not to get to0 precise, [I]wheel[/I] (look, I made a funny!) define it as its function: it spins. Or sits still. Not very helpful. Your word, Smith, is like this wheel. No, he doesn't spin, but he too, has a function. Many more than a wheel, I'd imagine, but that's beside the point. So now we've something that does something. I'll change my wording now: verb (I'm no grammer guru, so don't expect a very clear answer if it comes to transitive/passive/whatevah. I'm trying to define it with pure logic.) We have enough now to form a basic sentence. The wheel spins, the Smith smokes. What does he smoke? At this point, from the sentence we can infer one of two things: either something is left to the reader to assume (cigaretts) or, litterally, smoke is coming from Smith (by which we could then infer Smith was on fire). An object can have a function (verb) that uses another object. Indeed, sometimes this function is what helps define an object. Back to the chariot again, a chariot and a wheel are two seperate classes, yet the part of the chariot's function is to use the the wheel's function, to spin. It wouldn't be much of a chariot if it didn't. So now, we've finally arived to our end. Object (by the way, as I stated, I am no grammer guru, so I mean object in the sense of thing, not in the sense of recieving. With this definition, a subject is a kind of object) Smith (Smith being an identifier commonly used for the class 'people', though not always( I haven't gotten to the part about confusion with words, smoking the punk and smoking the cigarrettes)) I say, Object Smith (person) enacts the cigarrette's function of being smoked. ("being smoked" is a function that requires something doing using it for the object: the wheel turns, but somebody must make it turn)

Alright, you can relax, the worst of the :lecture: is over. Now for one quick thing to add and that'll be it before I can fully get around your post. [I]Context[/I]. Don't ever under-estimate it. It's essentially what make words work. Steven King said in his book "On Writing" that he disagreed with the common assumption that the sentence was the foundation of any work. He claimed it was the paragraph, because, while any sentence in itself can make sense, in order to get the true gist of it, and capture the essense of the piece, only a paragraph will do.

Sorry I didn't answer the question (it is alot to mull through). What I do hope I accomplished was set some things down in more technical terms. Maybe that will help put things together. Or maybe you'll just think "Stupid computer science student, trying to define sentences like they were programms."

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[Allamorph]

[FONT=Arial]This sentence is a complete lie.



While I want to start discussing this topic with you, I'm hung up one one of your statements; and without this statement clarified for me, I cannot proceed without simply repeating to you what you already know.
[quote name='Fasteriskhead']Just because I can pull together a bunch of words, even compatible ones (grammatically and conceptually), doesn't mean I'm automatically given a sentence.[/quote]
Show me a group of compatible words (grammatically and conceptually) which do not yield a sentence. Also, think about why I might have written what I wrote above.

[center]GON

BACKSON[/CENTER][/FONT]

[Umbra II]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Alright, I've had some time to mull this over. Looking at my previous post, I can tell it was woefully inadequet, but, if anyone bothered to read through the terminological mumbo-jumbo, I at least accomplished two things: A definition of a sentence similar, though more technical, to Fasterisk's, and providing a foundation for myself (i.e., now you know why it sounds like my answer is a program).[/FONT]

[QUOTE]If both "Smith smokes cigarettes" and "Snoop smoked the punk" are allowed their obvious meanings, then "smoke" has to be able to mean different things. But then, in each individual case, how do I tell when it means one thing and when it means something else? If I listen to a sentence like "Smith smokes cigarettes," do I have to quickly rifle through the catalog of all the possible meanings for each word and then select the combination that's most likely in order to understand the sentence? But I don't usually have that kind of experience. Usually the meaning of a sentence is something obvious to me. So is it an unconscious process? But then, why is it - in the few cases where I DO have a confusion - that this confusion rises to the surface? (if I was choosing everything unconsciously, why wouldn't that faculty just pick one word or the other?) And unconscious or not, what would even be the basis for choosing between one take or another? ("one makes more sense than the others" - what does that mean?)[/QUOTE]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]You are right on the money here. Each word must have it's own meaning. By the way, as a humorous example to you multiple meaning problem, when I first read the line "Snoop smoked the punk." What immediatly came to mind was Snoopy, the dog from the Peanuts comics, smoking (like a ciggarette) a long stick of wood commonly used to light fireworks (a punk). It just goes to show.

Anyway, each word has a catalouge of different meanings or concepts that we store in our brains once we learn it for latter use. Since we don't usually think of all the possibilities a word can mean, I would venture to guess that either yes, we do rifle through meanings unconscously, or that by the time we've finished reading it, the possibilities have become narrow enough that it isn't hard to figure out. So why, then, does it sometimes come to the front when it doesn't make sense? Back to the catalouge idea, when we see a sentence and come up with no information on it (we don't have any experience helping us out), it's a bit of a shocker. We're used to making sense of words, and with nothing to draw on, it sees a problem. (That is, of course, if you are actually paying attention to the sentence) the faculty has nothing to use.

But that's not always the case. Sometimes the faculty chooses wrong. (Why would a cartoon beagle smoke a stick of wood, anyway?) To put it in program language, your proccespr threw an exception. (What the computer does when the 'grammer' of the code is right, but it doesn't know what to do with it. Say, telling it to divide 1 by 0)

And the basis? Expieriece. Exposure. Background Data. Catalouge. Whatever. What makes 'sense' to us is what we know. That is why people from different cultures sometimes fear others. It really doesn't need to make 'sense' in what we usually mean by the term. I read Peanuts and shoot fire crackers more than keep up to date with modern rappers. [/FONT]

[QUOTE]We can even synthesize these elements into a single subject, "Oswald's assassination of Kennedy," which also expresses a concept. The problem is that just saying "Oswald's assassination of Kennedy" isn't itself a sentence; all it is is a concept, one which doesn't say whether it's actually a fact. It only becomes a sentence when one says that the assassination happened (or didn't happen). So, in analyzing it down to its contents, we've somehow eliminated whatever it was that made it a sentence in the first place! This means that even if it's possible to determine with complete precision what the conceptual meanings of individual words in a sentence are, there still has to be something unanalyzable in the sentence as a whole which asserts the sentence, which says that it's a fact and not just a possibility floating around in logical space. This is a big problem.
[/QUOTE]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Oh, no. Not a problem at all. "Oswald's assasination of Kennedy" is indeed not a sentence, but a concept, as you rightly put it. It is not neccesairily unanalyzable, though. Take a look at "assasination". (Is that what's called a gerund?) You and I will both probably agree on a definition: the act of assasination. The very noun implies a kind of verb. Assasinated. This streches to normal nouns to. "Oswald" can have many meanings, but the most basic one might be "is". Not that the noun by itself means anything. I am having trouble searching for words, so what I mean by imply is that the verb fits in nicely with the noun, or the action is just waiting to be named.

This can be illustrated (I hope) in two scenarios: some one calls your name (somebody writes: Kennedy's assasination by Oswald). Your response? "What?" "Yes?" "Can I help you?" (Usually, anyway. I'm not talking about people you'd be more inclined scream "SHUT UP" at). Your doing the same thing as the sentence is. "Where's my verb?" Ultimatly, the only verb there is, is...'is'. "The assasination of Kennedy was." doesn't make much sense if you are expecting a description, but does if you read it like "The assasination of Kennedy did exist." There it is.

For anyone not interested in programing, you may skip this paragraph. In java, simply writing "int x = 2;" does't do anything. It is a noun to java. Most programmers might read it "the identifier 'x' will be assigned the value 2), but the computer reads it more like "The assignment of 2 to identifier 'x' " You need a verb there. Fortunately, java has a single verb, to. Instead of 'is', though, it looks like "public static void main(String args[]) " but that's not important. ;)

So, there you have it. My to posts should form a nearly complete answers. If I have made any errors in my reasoning, or I overlooked a vital point of your statement, please feel free to point (it/them) out. Otherwise, the :babble::lecture: is over.
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[Break]

I always thought sentences were relatively simple.

They need a verb and an object. I don't think they necessarily need a subject - I know they don't need anything more in-depth, such as an extra clause or even an adjective.

[i]I sneezed.[/i]

This is a sentence. It has a verb ([i]sneezed[/i]) and an object ([i]I[/i]).

[Fasteriskhead]

Sorry to take a while responding. I usually need a couple of hours to cobble one of these posts together, which hasn't really been possible since I started working full time. Anyways, let me see if I can take a crack at all this.

[quote name='Dagger']Words have no fixed meaning on their own. The same goes for sentences, i.e., the meaning of a sentence is something independent from the meaning of the paragraph or chapter or novel it's found in.[/QUOTE]Well, first, I'm not sure if you took that bit you quoted as being my actual position on this (it's not, I'm using it basically as a straw man). That position says that words have no meaning [i]at all[/i], which is different from their having no [i]fixed[/i] meaning (which is what you're getting at). I think this is correct, to a point (the philosopher Frege uses the wonderful term "unsaturated" to describe functions that require something else added to them before they mean anything - words, in this sense, are unsaturated). Words do not have their meanings delivered to them from on high, neither do they have no meaning whatsoever; rather, they get their meaning from how they are used. On the other hand, words tend to maintain a [i]consistency[/i] to them, especially in the course of a single text. The meaning of a word (e.g. "the war") in one sentence will probably keep a very similar meaning when it appears in the sentence right afterwards (this isn't a [i]requirement[/i], only a tendency).

[quote name='Dagger']It seems like most of the problems you have defining a sentence arise because you keep circling around the idea of a pure, context-free sentence. But I'd say that the leap from sentences to paragraphs is at least as big as the leap from words to sentences.[/QUOTE]Now this I have more trouble with. There are two issues here, the difference between sentences and larger structures and the problem of context. I'll deal with the context thing first.

It's true I didn't get into this, mainly because I don't know how to present it very well. First of all, it's worth saying that this can work in reverse: sometimes how you understand an entire book is dependent on how you read a single line. But the bigger problem is that by taking meanings as even [i]partially[/i] dependent on context, you end up on a regress. If sentence a has to be understood in the context of chapter b, that means similarly that chapter b has to be understood within the entire meaning of book c, book c within style/genre d, and on and on. The result seems to me to be that understanding even a single sentence completely is going to require understanding the totality of [i]the entire language[/i] - or, if you take "context" more generally, an understanding of the whole world. This actually isn't as crazy an idea as it sounds, and I think I would personally hold to something like it. Take a very simple sentence like "I saw a duck." "Duck" expresses a concept, in this case a class of beings (never mind how to define that class, or how well its limits hold up). I could alter the [i]contents[/i] of that class, for example by removing one of the beings included within it (not destroying it, but [i]conceptually[/i] de-listing it), and thus change the entire concept so that "duck" no longer has the same meaning as before. The upshot is that when I say "I saw a duck," that sentence [i]depends on[/i] everything that is or could be a duck in order to get its meaning. Taking it all the way: whenever you talk about [i]anything[/i], [i]everything else[/i] has to be involved and understood intuitively somehow. What exactly that means, I'm still not clear on.

On the point about the leap from sentences to paragraphs, I think I have to disagree with you (there's probably some confusion due to the fact that when I talk about "sentences" I'm really talking about propositions and avoiding the more highfalutin' term). Again, this might not work for all cases since I'm limiting the kinds of sentences I'm talking about to purely descriptive ones. I said before that what seemed to seperate words (or, better, logical subjects) and sentences was that the former could only [i]express[/i] concepts, while the latter actually [i]assert[/i] them ("this is how it is"). Paragraphs don't seem to have as huge a split from sentences. Think of a paragraph composed of descriptive sentences - let's say, a really boring one describing my kitchen ("The dimensions of FH's kitchen are 7'x10'x8'. The kitchen has a gas stove with four burners." And so on). You could conceivably lump all of those little sentences together into one ("The 7'x10'x8 dimensionality of FH's kitchen, FH's kitchen having a gas stove with four burners... are all asserted") without doing violence to the meaning, even though you'd do plenty to the English language. Likewise, if you had an entirely descriptive chapter or even a book you could do the same trick. It would be a disaster to read, but what was said would remain basically the same. So, in these cases at least, I have to disagree with you.

[quote name='Umbra II'][FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"][Snip][/FONT][/QUOTE]Nah, sorry, I'm not going to figure out what specifically to quote here.

First of all, it's worth reading the Cratylus on this, since that's where Plato explicitly tries to link the problem of language with the ideas/forms (funny as hell, for most of its history Western philosophy has never really cared about language, even though it's cared a [i]lot[/i] about forms; I guess they just never bothered to try that path until the 18th-19th centuries). There's no way in hell I'm talking about any of the dialogues here, though, since I'm straining to keep myself intelligible already and a Plato thread would probably break me. Plus, despite the fact that it definitely has insights, I find the Cratylus mostly unhelpful: most of it is about how we [i]should[/i] talk rather than how we really do.

Secondly, I agree with what you say about "functions," if I understand you right. I take what you're getting as saying that the meaning of a word gets established through (can't think of a good term) "hooking up" with the meaning of other words in the sentence, with which it has a compatibility. This is basically what programming is all about, as far as I understand it. Anyways, something like this is probably right, although I don't know if it's enough (can you use a bunch of compatible, "hooked up" word meanings to get a sentence meaning?).

On your second post, I'd like to argue about one thing:

[quote name='Umbra II'][FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]"Oswald's assasination of Kennedy" is indeed not a sentence, but a concept, as you rightly put it. It is not neccesairily unanalyzable, though. Take a look at "assasination". (Is that what's called a gerund?) You and I will both probably agree on a definition: the act of assasination. The very noun implies a kind of verb. Assasinated. This streches to normal nouns to. "Oswald" can have many meanings, but the most basic one might be "is".[/FONT][/QUOTE]I don't think so. It's certainly true that the assertion of a sentence has to do with its verb (Indian grammarians figured this one out a couple of thousand years ago), but I don't think it's possible to take a logical subject (a concept) and "imply" a verb out of it. Not even if the concept includes a verb acting as a noun, such as gerunds, infinitives, and so on (and "assassination" is just a noun). Oswald actually did assassinate Kennedy, but this is never clear from the mere concept any more than in a counterfactual case ("Oswald's assassination of Nixon," "Babe Ruth's ruling over France," etc.). It requires some kind of extra push to say that the concept [i]is[/i] or [i]is not[/i] - a push doesn't seem to be analyzable in terms of the sentence's conceptual content. Thus my confusion.

[quote name='Allamorph'][FONT=Arial]This sentence is a complete lie.
...
Show me a group of compatible words (grammatically and conceptually) which do not yield a sentence.[/FONT][/QUOTE]I think you've misunderstood what I'm getting at (fair enough, I phrased that part badly). I meant "compatibility" in [i]conceptual[/i] terms there, by which I had in mind concepts that would be sensibile together and those that wouldn't. "Irresponsibility fishes on purple" is a grammatically perfect sentence, but it's nonsensical (well, I'm sure someone could imagine a situation where it would make sense, but for now let's say it's nonsense). My point was just that even if you gathered together a set of words/logical subjects (no verb conjugations, etc. yet) that would make sense [i]if[/i] they formed a sentence, you would never actually [i]get[/i] the sentence out of them. As for the liar paradox, I think it's actually something that can be worked out quite easily.

Assume that any sentence you can say always contains the fact that it's [i]asserted[/i], i.e. that it calls itself true. "It's hot outside" is, meaning-wise, equivalent to "it's true that it's hot outside" (it's kind of like multiplying by 1). Even negative statements should do this: "it's not hot outside," which is the same as "'it's hot outside' is false," can be made into "''it's hot outside' is false' is true." As a way of making this clearer, I'll make it so that the main sentence is named by a variable. For example, "it's hot outside" becomes "'it's hot outside' is x and x is true." So with a liar paradox like "this sentence is a complete lie," you end up with a structure like "'x is false' is x and x is true," or simply "x is false and x is true." This is a simple contradiction. Assuming anyone believes in logic laws anymore, all contradictory statements are false, and the same with this one. So the reverse of the statement, its negation, must be true. However, the negation of "this sentence is a complete lie" (understanding it as I am) isn't "'this sentence is a complete lie' is false," which would fall right back into the paradox. It should be taken instead as "'this sentence is a complete lie and this sentence is true' is false," which in regular English can be translated as "this sentence is not both true and false." Does that make sense?

[quote name='Break']I always thought sentences were relatively simple.[/QUOTE]Well, it's easy to [i]make[/i] a sentence. All you need is a subject, a verb, maybe a direct or indirect object, and some other stuff for flavor. Anyone can do it. But since I'm an overeducated loser with a lot of free time, I'm actually asking a different question - not "how do you make a sentence?" but "how is making a sentence possible at all?" I find that, generally speaking, the interesting thing about sentences isn't that they follow a grammatical formula (even though that's true). Sentences tell us what's up with stuff, which is something tougher to nail down than grammar.

Good god, that was long. I think I'm gonna get some dinner.

[Break]

[quote name='Fasteriskhead'] Well, it's easy to [i]make[/i] a sentence. All you need is a subject, a verb, maybe a direct or indirect object, and some other stuff for flavor. Anyone can do it. But since I'm an overeducated loser with a lot of free time, I'm actually asking a different question - not "how do you make a sentence?" but "how is making a sentence possible at all?" I find that, generally speaking, the interesting thing about sentences isn't that they follow a grammatical formula (even though that's true). Sentences tell us what's up with stuff, which is something tougher to nail down than grammar.[/QUOTE]

Oh right, I understand what you're getting at now. Man this is confusing stuff.

[quote]...is it an [i]unconscious[/i] process?[/quote]

I think that it is - for the most part. The only times when figuring out sentence requires thought is when it isn't in a regular order (for me anyway), and - I'm sure this applies to everyone - when it is being read by someone from another culture. I can't think of any examples right now, but surely within society different groups read things differently? It may not even be that broad - it may boil down to much more complex things like your personality, your own experiences, your gender, etc. which I don't think I can discuss right now. :animeswea

But I can say that maybe this dilemma comes to those who are intellectual daydreamers more often than those who don't think that much about what they are reading in such a deep way. You will only notice that you're conscious of a particular sentence being hard to imagine if you are thinking about the words themselves, and not just the image they create. But then I suppose this doesn't mean that people who don't think deeply about it don't have the same problem: perhaps they [i]unconsciously[/i] notice something being not right about the sentence.

As for sentences not being a regular order, I think I have even said something above that makes me confused, even though it is correct: "...surely within society different groups read things differently?" Having 'society' and 'different' next to each other without being seperated by a mark of punctuation, though it isn't needed, makes me have to think about the sentence more. Why? Well, perhaps I am on my own here, but I see 'society different' which doesn't make sense to me, so my brain automatically changes it around to 'different society', which makes more sense, but then when I read on this confuses the sentence even more. Eventually I know that it is correct, and I understand its meaning; but no matter how many times I read it, something just doesn't feel right about it.

So perhaps it is the actual structure of a sentence that causes confusion regarding the meaning. As Wittgenstein said, "Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." - maybe language itself is the problem. It can never be perfect, after all.

Man, this stuff twists my brain like a wet rag.

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Fasteriskhead]I think you've misunderstood what I'm getting at (fair enough, I phrased that part badly). I meant "compatibility" in [i]conceptual[/i] terms there, by which I had in mind concepts that would be sensibile together and those that wouldn't. "Irresponsibility fishes on purple" is a grammatically perfect sentence, but it's nonsensical (well, I'm sure someone could imagine a situation where it would make sense, but for now let's say it's nonsense). My point was just that even if you gathered together a set of words/logical subjects (no verb conjugations, etc. yet) that would make sense [U]if[/U] they formed a sentence, you would never actually [U]get[/U'] the sentence out of them.[/quote]
[FONT=Arial]So basically, you were intending to say that grammatical compatibility does not necessarily guarantee conceptual compatibility, and vice versa. I agree in the former case, but I'm not so sure about the latter ... assuming I'm reading you right.

So then, if we take the statement "Og want cave," I think your point is illustrated from the direction I was coming from. Conceptually, it makes perfect sense. Og, a person, would like something. In this case, it's a cave. Anyone hearing this statement would know immediately what he meant – assuming that they spoke the same language, which I might get into later.

Grammatically, it's not perfect. It's close – i.e., it contains a clear subject and a clear verb (and a clear D.O., but that's unnecessary to a perfect sentence) – but is saying a sentence is imperfect the same as saying that it is not a sentence?

What I mean is, doesn't the process of attempting to communicate concepts at least approximate a sentence? Take another example: "You. There. Now." In writing, these words aren't technically a sentence. However, the manner in which they are written implies that they are spoken, which raises an interesting concept.

When you read words, are they just words on the page, or do you hear them pronounced in your mind? Aren't written words just a defined method for conveying sound? If so, then why are we trying to communicate with this sound? Isn't [I]that[/I] just a means of producing an image or concept in another's mind similar to the one in one's own?

Notice this sentence: "Look over there." Without clarification, it's just an imperative. It is grammatically correct (subject [I]you[/I] is implied), but when spoken, it is usually accompanied by a motion: an arm or a finger, or even just a face, pointed in the direction the speaker wishes the hearer to look.

What I'm getting at is: if you're trying to find out what a sentence is, I can only direct you back to [COLOR=DarkRed]Break[/COLOR]'s first post. If, though, you're trying to isolate the meaning in a sentence, then you've already contradicted yourself; at the beginning of the thread you specifically stated you didn't want to get into the communicative aspect of language in society, and the only reason a sentence has meaning is because society is using it as a method for communication.

As to why the [I]format[/I] exists, it is most likely because of an effort to communicate more clearly than a statement such as "Og want cave" can do.

[QUOTE][I]As for the liar paradox, I think it's actually something that can be worked out quite easily.[/I][/QUOTE]
Are you sure?

[QUOTE][I]Assume that any sentence you can say always contains the fact that it's [i]asserted[/i], i.e. that it calls itself true. "It's hot outside" is, meaning-wise, equivalent to "it's true that it's hot outside" (it's kind of like multiplying by 1). Even negative statements should do this: "it's not hot outside," which is the same as "'it's hot outside' is false," can be made into "''it's hot outside' is false' is true." As a way of making this clearer, I'll make it so that the main sentence is named by a variable. For example, "it's hot outside" becomes "'it's hot outside' is x and x is true." So with a liar paradox like "this sentence is a complete lie," you end up with a structure like "'x is false' is x and x is true," or simply "x is false and x is true." This is a simple contradiction. Assuming anyone believes in logic laws anymore, all contradictory statements are false, and the same with this one. So the reverse of the statement, its negation, must be true. However, the negation of "this sentence is a complete lie" (understanding it as I am) isn't "'this sentence is a complete lie' is false," which would fall right back into the paradox. It should be taken instead as "'this sentence is a complete lie and this sentence is true' is false," which in regular English can be translated as "this sentence is not both true and false." Does that make sense?[/I][/QUOTE]
No. Not that it doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint, just that in the process of the dissection we run into the problem of assuming that "x is false" is independent of the the sentence, while actually "x is false" is "x is true". The conclusion that "this sentence is not both true and false" is erroneous because it implies that one or the other is still true; by that I'm saying that "is not both" = "is either-or". The conclusion should be "this sentence is neither true nor false". But then, what is it? If it cannot be one without being the other, and it cannot be both but by the same token cannot be neither, then it just keeps cycling back into itself.

I didn't write it so that you'd analyze it logically. I wrote it to show that a sentence's meaning does not depend wholly on logic, but also on abstraction. The meaning of this sentence was not actually what the words said, but rather the concept that the analysis of its words led to. It made sense by making no sense.

"This sentence is a complete lie" means quite simply that abstraction exists.

Meaning, then, is got from both a sentence's logical meaning and its abstract meaning, and thus quite conveniently defies analysis.

I think [I]I[/I] may need some lunch.

[B]Edit:[/B] I'm laughing right now because I just noticed how appropriate my sig quote is.[/FONT]

[Dagger]

Re: Propositions, I appreciate that you're not dragging us off into the wild underbrush of philosophical terminology, but it would help to know when a sentence is a proposition. Or, rather, when is a sentence just a sentence and [i]not[/i] a proposition?

[size=1]And if this was already touched on, just chalk up my not noticing to the fact that I'm sick... [/size]

[quote name='Allamorph'][FONT=Arial]
[B]Edit:[/B] I'm laughing right now because I just noticed how appropriate my sig quote is.[/FONT][/QUOTE]
:animesmil

~Dagger~

[Soren]

[QUOTE]Orrigianlly by Fasteriskhead: I don't think so. It's certainly true that the assertion of a sentence has to do with its verb (Indian grammarians figured this one out a couple of thousand years ago), but I don't think it's possible to take a logical subject (a concept) and "imply" a verb out of it. Not even if the concept includes a verb acting as a noun, such as gerunds, infinitives, and so on (and "assassination" is just a noun). Oswald actually did assassinate Kennedy, but this is never clear from the mere concept any more than in a counterfactual case ("Oswald's assassination of Nixon," "Babe Ruth's ruling over France," etc.). It requires some kind of extra push to say that the concept is or is not - a push doesn't seem to be analyzable in terms of the sentence's conceptual content. Thus my confusion.
[/QUOTE]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Sorry, I mis-worded. What I mean to say is, every concept has but one function: it is. "The wheel", "The whell is". "The spinning of the wheel", "The wheel spins", "The spinning of the wheel is."

When it comes to conceptual context, I suppose it wouldn't be apparent. Like you said, every concept needs to have something that makes it actuall. Every statement concievable can probably be reduced into it's concept and it's function (and when it gets right down to it, there is really only one fucntion, 'is'. Even negative statements can be expressed like, "The not-spinning of the wheel is.")[/FONT]