X-Git-Url: http://lambda.jimpryor.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lambda.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=damn.mdwn;h=ad6877528976c79ede34ee1cd1d6c1d182e9e330;hp=f484a96eef0178c8ba27e568f584f695c722f9ce;hb=31398f4c82bd06c9369bcdf4ddeaf7aa483f09d2;hpb=bce61d3c028464b6bea42a46dd7ac471835759eb;ds=sidebyside diff --git a/damn.mdwn b/damn.mdwn index f484a96e..ad687752 100644 --- a/damn.mdwn +++ b/damn.mdwn @@ -1,3 +1,20 @@ +1. Sentences have truth conditions. + +2. If "John read the book" is true, then it follows that: + John read something, + Someone read the book, + John did something to the book, + etc. + +3. If "John read the damn book", + all the same entailments follow. + To a first approximation, "damn" does not affect at-issue truth + conditions. + +4. "Damn" does contribute information about the attitude of the speaker + towards some aspect of the situation described by the sentence. + + Expressives such as "damn" have side effects that don't affect the at-issue value of the sentence in which they occur. What this claim says is unpacked at some length here: . @@ -253,7 +270,7 @@ The idea here is we capture the continuation that `(damn)` has when it gets eval However, this doesn't work. The reason is that an undelimited continuation represents the future of the evaluation of `(damn)` *until the end of the computation*. So when `'id` is supplied to `k`, we go back to building the at-issue tree until we're finished *and that's the end of the computation*. We never get to go back and evaluate the application of `(cons (cons 'side-effect 'bad) <>)` to anything. -With undelimited continuations +With delimited continuations ------------------------------ The straightforward way to fix this is to use, not undelimited continuations, but instead a more powerful apparatus called "delimited continuations." These too will be explained in due course, don't expect to understand all this now. @@ -299,7 +316,7 @@ Now to pair that with an affective side-issue content, we'd instead define `damn (define damn (lambda () (shift k (cons (cons 'side-effect 'bad) (k 'id))))) -And voilà. +And voilà! (reset (cons (cons 'the 'man) (cons 'read