Bayeslisk comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013) - Less Wrong

21 Post author: KnaveOfAllTrades 26 July 2013 02:35AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 22 May 2014 11:06:59PM *  3 points [-]

So 'I diswant ice cream' is a stronger statement than 'I do not want ice cream', though most people, whose language is less considered and precise, would (also) use the latter to cover the former.

Minor point of information. In English "do not want" is not the negation of want. It actually means what you have defined "diswant" to mean. The "not" is privative here, not merely negative. People are not being less considered and precise when they use it this way. They are using the words precisely as everyone but you uses them -- that is, precisely in accordance with what they mean.

You are welcome to invent a new language, just like English except that "not" always means simple negation and never means privation; but that language is not English. Neither, for that matter, would the corresponding modification of French be French. Comparing the morphology of translations of "want", "do not want", "have", and "do not have" in a further selection of languages with Google Translate suggests that the range of languages for which this is the case is large.

Comment author: Bayeslisk 22 May 2014 11:15:13PM 1 point [-]

I don't think I understand what you mean by privative. Is it something like the difference between "na'e" and "to'e" in Lojban? For reference: {mi na'e djica} would mean "I other-than want", and {mi to'e djica} would mean "I opposite-of want".

Comment author: RichardKennaway 23 May 2014 12:17:47PM *  0 points [-]

That's pretty much it. Privative "not" would be "to'e". The English "not" covers both senses according to context, but "not want" is always privative and some lengthier phrase has to be used to express absence of wanting. Or not so lengthy, e.g. "meh".

Comment author: Bayeslisk 24 May 2014 01:36:36AM 0 points [-]

Oh, cool. I've found the distinction to be a very useful one to make.