Language of Truth as described in Artistic License - Linguistics

Okay, so the Artistic License – Linguistics article describes the Language of Truth trope like this:

Is this true? I've not been able to find evidence for it, or indeed, any information to shine light on the situation.

Likely busy writing something.

Just actually read Language of Truth, as it shows a simple paradox about it. Of course, it's only speaking about a Real Life Language of Truth from a logical standpoint with a very specific definition of what that Language of Truth is supposed to be and how it's supposed to work, not a magical, mental, intentional, or whatever it is you usually find in fiction.

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I think I get it to some degree.

"This statement can not be translated into a Language of Truth." Let's call this statement T.

If T is true, then of course you can't translate it, meaning the language cannot express all truths. And of course, T has to be true, since false statements can't be translated into a Language of Truth, and if T were able to be translated into a Language of Truth, that would make it false, which contradicts the notion that you cannot express lies in it.

But, that only tells me that if you can't express falsehoods, you can't express all truths as well. How far does it go? Might you be able to express some truths? Or would you indeed be unable to express any truth?

Likely busy writing something.

Yeah, I got that interpretation as well. Not entirely sure how the logic holds up. The preclusion of one statement does not imply the preclusion of all statements. But the thing is that a statement can't by itself determine if something is true or not, without magic of some kind. I mean, a language in which you say, "this duck is black," can't determine whether you're pointing at a black or a white duck.

Of course, technically, you'd be able to to translate that statement to a language that can only contain the truth anyway, because it says "can not" rather than "cannot", but that's nitpicking.

edited 16th Feb '15 7:14:02 AM by AnotherDuck

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I think you wouldn't be able to express any truth at all.

Expanding upon the "the duck is black" example: this affirmation is true or false depending on factors outside the language. Since it "might" be false, it cannot be said at all, because:

(A) You can't refer to ducks. No word for "duck", "bird", "animal"; no expression as "feathered one" or "flying quacky he" is possible. This can be extended to show the language lacks any noun phrase (nouns, pronouns or anything that might be used instead of a noun) or substantivization process. You simply can't refer to things in the language.

(B) You can't use "black" as a predicative. Same as above, the language lacks predicatives, and the same reasoning applies to any predicate (since "I saw Santa Claus" would be false).

(C) the language lacks a proper structure to join "duck" and "black" in the same sentence. However, the same structure is required to say stuff as "the sky is blue", "John saw Mary" and other affirmations. The only structures left would yield non-epistemological sentences - greetings, commands, questions and other stuff that can be never true or false.

Kind of an old necro, but a non-magical Language of Truth would not be able, as noted, to evaluate the external truth or falsehood of statements made using it. Rather, I envision it as one that does not contain the potential to construct logical fallacies or semantic errors. I have no idea what such a language would look like, of course.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's an intentional quirk of the concept, though. The language is somehow affected by non-linguistical elements.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.