Notes

Thanks for logging in.

Searching Member Sites
I’ve recently added a search function so that you can limit your Google search to just the blogs that are members of MetaxuCafe. I think that will be a good resource for everyone looking for literary topics online and you’ll find it right on the front page as well as other places on the site. Now if you want to read about, say Orhan Pamuk, but only want to search the litblogs you trust, you can narrow your search right here.

• Home
• About
• Blog Headlines
• Find Blogs
• Forums
• Roundtable

Self-Referential Sentences - Dead Beat Lays Down A Challenge

by Dead Beat on March 01, 2007

So Dead Beat as you know has been chewing the fat with Douglas R. Hofstadter on Self-Referential Sentences - sentences which refer to themselves - are you up to the challenge?

Here are a few D.B. enjoys:

- I have heard this sentence is a rumour.

- The only point of this sentence is to make clear what is the point of this sentence.

A variant of this: This sentence contains exactly threee errors.

Some of the sentences depend on the difference between use and mention - the use-mention distinction.

When a word is used to refer to something, it is said to be used. When a word is quoted (to be examined for its surface aspects - typographical, phonetic etc) it is said to be mentioned.

You can’t have “your cake” and spell it “too”.

Another possibility is the ambiguous nature of the first-person pronoun “I”. does “I” refer to the speaker or to the sentence?

I am not the subject of this sentence.

I am simultaneously writing and being written.

Expanding on this ambiguity: As long as you are not reading me, the fourth word of this sentence has no referent.

Hey out there - is that you reading me, or is it someone else?

What about sentences with ambiguous referents?

Thit sentence is not self-referential because “thit” is not a word.

Then there are counterfactual conditionals - sentences which postulate in their first clause (the antecedent) some contrary to fact situation and extrapolates in its second clause (the consequent) some consequence of it (phew! - are you glad to get to the end of this sentence?)

If wishes were horses, the antecedent of this conditional would be true.

This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.

So Dead Beat thanks The Hofmaster and lays down a challenge for all you would be writers out there.

Am I the best sentence there is?

Please send your samples along.

This post has been viewed (on this page) 383 times .