I would think that she wanted to speak privately just like any other rational and intelligent human being.

That doesn't follow from the provided context, specifically, the portion which stated that Jill looked around after Joe answered "yes", found Mary, and then asked Joe why he lied.

Nor does it answer the question being asked.

What information do you think/believe that Jill would be asking you to provide for her?

I supposed that you'd taken the entire context into consideration. Evidently that was a wrongful presuppositon. If we are Joe when the question is first posed, we could - depending upon connotation, facial expressions and the like - know that that is what Jill was asking for. However, if Jill then looked around, found Mary, and asked why we lied we would have to explain that we misunderstood the question. The problem is that when asking to speak in private, the speaker usually has readily identifiable cues that are not present when asking if anyone else is home.

It is plausible though, no question there.

So, let me know if this is correct.

You would allow for an interpretation of Jill asking to speak privately to Joe (me), yet argue against an interpretation of "there" being the room Joe (I) was in?

That is correct.

I am conceding to the idea that "Are you the only one here?" could indicate that Jill wants to speak to Joe in private. I am further saying that in order to know if that is what she meant it would require being there in person because those words do not mean that as spoken, therefore Jill's body language and intonation would offer the additional contextual information necessary to infer such a thing. It is possible that that could be what is meant by that expression.

Furthermore, I am saying that if Jill meant "can we speak privately" she wouldn't ask "Are you the only one here?" while meaning the room that they were both occupying, because she would be in that room and could see that much for herself so there would be no need to ask for information regarding that. Rather, she would be asking if it were possible to speak in private, which implies being uninterrupted by others. So, if that is the meaning intended, then she would be asking if anyone else were in the house.

I find no reason for Jill to be concerned about Joe's newborn baby compromising an otherwise private conversation. It's not like they understand what is being spoken. Mary still is in the other room, isn't she?

I mean, how do you(Joe) possibly infer all of that from "Are you the only one here?"



I mean it could be the case that Jill was really a guy, Joe is gay, and Jill had a chocolate lollipop that s/he wanted to stick up Joe's arse in some weird sexual fantasy... but we have no reason to posit nor infer such a thing.

What is there to wonder?

Well you didn't explicitly deny such a possibility, makes me wonder now...

It seems that you do not understand how language works Pan.

Look at how folk communicate. If we want to go to McDonalds to eat a Big Mac and fries, we do not go through and explicitly deny of all of the places that we do not want to go and/or all of the things on the menu that we do not want to order. We state what we want and others understand.

That is because meaning is public and shared, not private and unknown. Meaning is found by looking at how folk are using words.

Why then, during a thought experiment ought the author have to explicitly deny each and every logically possible meaning of every word s/he employs? Why ought the author be required to take an account of every possible meaning, or give an account which excludes all other possibl meanings but the one that is intended? It seems that you still have not apprehended the brute fact that there is no exactitude of meaning possible with natural/common language. That is why formal languages have been created.

There's the colors again. She would kick yer arse in person.