John, your points about this medium are very well taken. And I think that's why Terry Moore, one of the leaders of the SPIN project for transcribing Peirce's manuscripts, has offered to set up a videoconference for those who'd like to discuss issues arising from the Lowells over that more immediate medium. 😊 If anyone reading this wants to take part, let me know offlist and we can start making arrangements for that.
You mentioned that "any Japanese sentence can be turned into a question just by adding 'ka' at the end." Canadians often do that by adding "eh?" (rhymes with "say") at the end of a sentence. Usually it's the kind of "question" that expects a positive response, but it's still a way of reducing assertiveness, often in response to the other person's body language, and it's probably an aspect of that politeness that Canadians are notorious for. 😉 Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 11-Oct-17 09:43 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1.9 On 10/11/2017 7:50 AM, <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] wrote: > [Peirce] also says that “the logician assumes that the meaning of > language is well known between himself and the person to whom he is > imparting his doctrine” — an assumption that is quite unrealistic in > ordinary dialogue, and in fact is a common source of miscommunication > between people I agree with both you and Peirce. But I'd add two points, which I'm sure that Peirce would make: (1) we have no other choice; and (2) we can always ask a question. One reason why there are so many "flame" wars with email and tweets is that it's not possible to make an immediate comment or question. When two people are engaged in a face-to-face discussion, they can detect intentions by tone of voice or gestures. But a text by itself has no context -- that's why people added emoticons and emojis :) In fact, it's not surprising that the Japanese invented emojis. ('ji' is Japanese for 'character'.) The Japanese language itself has the word order Subject-Object-Verb. It also has the option of putting a little particle after the verb. For example, any Japanese sentence can be turned into a question just by adding 'ka' at the end. You can add other particles to emphasize it or weaken it. That means you can watch the other person's expression while you're talking. If you notice the beginning of a smile, you can add 'yo' to emphasize the point. If you notice a frown, you can add 'ka' to turn it into a question. The listener can show a facial emoji during a sentence, and the speaker can insert a responding emoji at the end. John
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