English semantics

[ptc24]

Poll #773 English semantics

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

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If X has never Yed...

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It is true to say that X has only Yed Zs.
1 (12.5%)

It is false to say that X has only Yed Zs.
3 (37.5%)

It is not meaningful to say whether X has only Yed anything.
4 (50.0%)

Comments

[simont]

Depends on context! :-)

If you're talking about a specific X whose entire history of Ying (or not) you know, then certainly it seems to me that telling somebody "X has only Yed Zs" is liable to give the false impression that X has Yed at least one, or possibly at least two, Zs. Unless you're both mathematicians, in which case the implicit application of predicate logic semantics to English is a favourite form of entertainment.

If you're talking about general Xes ("for an X to participate in this activity they need to have only ever Yed Zs") then it could go either way, and probably someone else needs to clarify. ("Hang on, what if they haven't Yed at all?" "Oh, didn't think of that. Yes, that'd be fine too. What I really meant is that they should never have Yed a non-Z.")

[lnr]

Thankyou, your comment lets me happily tick false. I was almost happy to tick it anyway, given we're talking about English rather than logic, but a bit of me was tempted by the "it's meaningless" option. But no, it's not meaningless in English, and I could definitely see someone having the latter conversation.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

(I've managed to get this to work today :-)

I think it could be true or false, depending on the verb Y and object Z (or it could be neither, if we lack relevant information about X's behaviour!). If Z is not a member of the default class of potential objects for Y used intransitively, then it could be true.

For example, if we are told "John has never killed" we would probably assume a default object which is human, or at least significantly sentient. So it wouldn't be a problem to also say "John has only killed mosquitoes" (or weeds, or harmful bacteria directly attacking him, depending on how much of a purist John is) since mosquitoes are not (I think) typically implied when we say someone has, or hasn't, killed. I would, under these circumstances, if I knew that John actually had killed mosquitoes (and not killed anything else), say that both statements were true.

However, if we are told "John has never driven" and then also told "John has only driven cars", this would be decidedly odd, because cars are (I think) a default object of the verb "drive" in our present-day society. I would go so far as to say the second statement must be false, if the first is true.

(So I picked the third option, even though it doesn't really correspond to my view, since it's more ambiguous than the other options.)