From: Paul S. Dixon (dixonps@juno.com)
Date: Sat Sep 19 1998 - 13:51:13 EDT
On Sat, 19 Sep 1998 12:27:42 -0400 Jonathan Robie <jonathan@texcel.no>
writes:
>At 09:38 AM 9/19/98 EDT, CEP7@aol.com wrote:
>There is a very good discussion of this in Robertson's Massive Yellow
Tome,
>starting at the bottom of page 1024, which is found in a section that
>discusses lots of things that are pretty close to normal conditional
>sentences, but aren't easy to read as such. (I read this yesterday
because
>I stumbled on the phrase EI DOQHSETAI THi GENEAi TAUTH SHMEION >(Mark
8:12), which threw me completely.)
>
>In 1 Cor 7:17, EI MH does seem to be used as a fixed expression, meaning
>"except". See 1 Cor 7:5; Ga 1:7,19; Ro 14:14; Mt 5:13; Mt 11:27; Mt
21:19
>for further examples of this. Robertson says that this is also very
common
>in classical Greek.
>
>I don't think you will easily coerce this into "if A then B" form, which
is
>necessary if you want to construct an "if not A then not B" statement.
>Robertson treats this as an "elliptical condition", where the "if"
clause
>is not expressed, and presents his view of the history by which this
usage
>emerged. If he's right, then you have to infer your own A. However, I
>suspect that there *is* no A that you can write into such a sentence
>without changing its meaning, and I find it clearer to just treat EI MH
as
>a fixed expression that means "except".
>
>Also, you should be aware that a lot has been written about the fact
that
>"if" in natural language does not mean the same as "if" in formal logic.
>See, for instance, Paul Grice's "Studies in the Way of Words", which
goes
>into a brief history of this question. My own observation is this: the
>mapping from natural language conditionals to formal logic is not well
>defined, and in most cases there is no really good mapping. If you write
a
>syllogism in order to express the meaning of a natural language
>conditional, then the syllogism generally omits some of the meaning that
a
>native speaker of the language might generally associate with the
content
>of the original sentence.
>
Jonathan:
Would you care to summarize Paul Grice's thesis, or at least what were
some of his main points which stood out to you and why? I suppose I
could get the book and read it, and if you can wet my appetite perhaps
I will, but a brief thought regarding it would be delicious.
Actually, I know Charles has a special interest in the conditional (since
he
is doing doctoral studies regarding it), so he might be able to add some
light.
Paul Dixon
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