On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> and in the first case, it's clear that the second line is
> being quoted even if you don't attempt to machine-translate the Arabic
> (from the fairly well-known facts that Arabic is right-to-left and that
> a colon is a method of effectively quoting the rest of the sentence).
I disagree on this point: colons aren't always used for quotation.
Therefore: given the inherent uncertainty in unknown text followed by
a colon, I maintain that it should be treated as meaningless. H.
Arbitor: perhaps this discussion should be part of the record?
> I'd be interested in what you make of the (currently unjudged) CFJ that
> may or may not have been called in the following message by PSS:
> […]
>> Well then:
>>
>> I invoke judgement on the other statement : I invoke judgement on the
>> other statement
By the way, note that the "Well then:" is an example of a colon
followed by an action.
> I'm having severe problems parsing this, and am leaning towards
> considering it meaningless. By your reasoning, though, this created two
> CFJs?
Possibly, but I think it's too ambiguous.
In my view,
{
I eat a pickle: I eat another pickle.
}
does not quote the second part - it's just two actions. On the other hand,
{
I CFJ on the following statement: I eat another pickle.
}
obviously does quote the second part. But what about this?
{
I CFJ on the other statement in this message: I eat another pickle.
}
The first part doesn't *need* a quote; without a colon, I would
interpret the second part as a standalone action that also happens to
be the target of an indirect reference from the first part:
{
I CFJ on the other statement in this message. I eat another pickle.
}
But nor is it obvious that the first part can't take a quote, i.e.
that it can't be a wordier synonym of "the following statement". The
colon weighs in favor of the quote interpretation, but the fact that
"I eat another pickle" is in the form of an action (well, if eating a
pickle were an Agoran action) weighs the other way. Perhaps it is
ambiguous, or perhaps the colon wins out. But in the actual message,
"the other statement" is vague enough to weigh in favor of
meaninglessness...
