When the compiler of the online "Causes of death of renowned philosophers" was debating about Grice, he came out with the diagnosis:
"non-natural causes".
Surely a misnomer. EVERYTHING is natural, even so-called contra natura sex!
So, what was Grice after? While he does see Naturalism as one of the 8 betes noires on his way to Heaven ("Reply to Richards"), he was joking on the idea -- Grecian at that -- of
phusis.
For the Grecians, phusis is 'growth'. Natura is 'growth'. The Romans were never so inspired. Natura is more to do with 'birth' than 'growth'.
The Grecian disease started when they qualified some "signs" (semeia) as "phusikos", natural. Grice objected. There were, the Grecians argued, OTHER types of signs. But they were very confused as to what they were. Grice, to amuse his-self, called them "non-natural", and the rest is history.
These things need to be learned (sic) to the Chinese. There was an online site I consulted once to the effect (i.e. to the perlocutionary effect) that Grice was wrong in conceiving the idea of natural meaning. All meaning, this Chinese site read, is "non-natural". So, we have to be careful when discussing Grice in an, shall we say, inter-cultural context.
The smoke does not 'mean', "smoked salmon". We do 'say' "mean" but we use the scare-quote intonation.
Those spots "mean" measles
Spots cannot mean.
Similarly, flowers don't smell. They lack, as Geary remarked me, olfactory noses.
Cheers,
JL
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Nope.
ReplyDeleteSpots can mean. We here in America sometimes use the word "mean" to mean "to be conclusive evidence of." It's our F'en language, and that's how we use it. It might be nice if we were more fastidious, but we're not.
And flowers smell, but only with an adjective. We use "smell" unadorned, expecially colloquially, to mean "stink." But with an adjective, flowers can smell lovely, nice, sweet, and, most often, wonderful. They do. We say it. So it must be so.
I can't shake the feeling that linguists feel threatened by corrupt usages. What's the point of drawing fine distinctions if the hoi polloi won't observe them? What good are rules if they are always descriptive? Language is not the property of linguists; it's an existential phenomenon that behaves as it behaves. I'm not saying that you can't use descriptive rule prescriptively - you do it when you tell someone to act like a gentleman or lady, or to write "correctly" (i.e., in standard language, as it has evolved). But usage is as users do. And English is what Anglophones speak.
Now, about "he ate and apple," which I can no longer find. (So many threads, too little time.) I disagree that "he at an apple" means "he ate the edible parts of an apple." I think it means "he did what A thinks one does when one eats an apple, because U believes that A's notion of what that is is similar enough to U's to make any difference inconsequential to the communication"
Thus, "use a 2x4" means different things in answer to "How do I frame the wall?" and "How do I get the mule's attention?" To assume that in each case U means "use a piece of lumber exactly 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches" seems to me incorrect. In one case, it does mean that, but in the mule's case, it just means "hit him with a stick."
Explicit utterances, I think, are intended to cause A to build a thought of a certain degree of congruence with a thought that U wishes to communicate. The degree of desired/necessary precision must be inferred from context, and "he ate an apple" lacks enough to permit us to infer that "he ate the edible parts of an apple" was the intention of the statement.
JL - Please post any response in this thread, as (i) I cannot read all threads in search of references to my comments, and (ii) the search function above seems not to work. I have subscribed to this thread by email and will see any responses you post here.
ReplyDeleteSure. The reference was Kroch. He had this infamous example about the "apple". I´ll see if I can find the reference. And I´ll check with the search function. Meanwhile, all the best, and lovely you are using U and A as HPG intended them. I love you! But don´t call Grice a "linguist". He was a philosopher, or foolosopher, if you must! (The word was invented by Hobbes and I use it to describe my-self). JLS
ReplyDeleteI wasn't referring to Grice but to anyone who insists that spots cannot "mean." If that can only be done by saying "People who claim that spots cannot mean," consider it done.
ReplyDeleteFrom an online source I get the abstract of Kroch 1972,
ReplyDeleteLexical and Inferred Meanings for Some Time Quarterly Progress Reports of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, no. 104, pp. 260-267.
"This note describes the meanings of the adverb pairs before / until and during / throughout. The adverbs are given lexical semantics in which the first and second members of each pair differ by containing an existential and a universal quantifier respectively. The note looks at cases where the members of the pairs overlap in meaning and presents a pragmatic rule of interpretation to account for the overlap. Another pragmatic principle is presented to cover other defeasible inferences from the use of time adverbs and arguments are presented that these principles cannot simply follow from the Gricean Maxims. Instead, they seem to be special cases of Geis and Zwicky's "invited inferences.""
I excerpt:
"A sentence like
(i) John ate the apple.
is taken to mean
(ii) John ate at least some of the apple.
-- (But applying Grice´s maxims (i) might as well be taken to implicate
(iii) John ate all of the apple.
Kroch diagnoses: "(Now), a theory that accounts for what exists and for what does not exist with equal ease can provide no explanations" (p. 266).
There is a footnote here, but the pdf. fails to reproduce p. 267.
In general, Grice can be saved. As he would say, "Grice Saves, but there´s no such thing as a free lunch". Or, "what the eye no longer sees, the heart no longer grieves for" (WoW, Retrospective Essay). The explanation runs along the lines of a CG, or common ground between Utterer and Addressee.
It is stereotypical known that apples are ate partially except, since you were mentioning them, mules and other animals. So, unless John is a mule, he will NOT eat the unedible bits of the apple.
There´s also the fact of triviality. I don´t think Grice would hold that "implicature" is involved here at all. Implicatures are plays or games with language, with a point. Only in the case of a Jeopardy game, or something would the issue as to whether "some" or "all" was meant would arise. Cfr.
(1) A: What month has 28 days?
B: All, including February.
(2) A: Henry VIII married five times. True or false?
B: True. He married five, indeed six times.
-- Examples by courtesy of M. K. Stubbs, "Pragmatics".
Etc.
You SHOULD reconsider "mean". Though. It was only after reading Chapman that I realised that Stevenson, that Grice quotes, did use "scare quotes". His example something like
(3) The barometer means that the humidity is very high.
Or cfr.
(4) The red light means that the computer is on.
Surely these are ´scare quotes´. "Mean", etymologically speaking, has to do with "mind", and surely barometers and red lights have no mind.
Animism, though, and Personification of Nature, are very primitive forces in humankind, and I´m not surprised Anglo-phones, as you call them, are driven by them!
Cheers,
JLS
Kramer: "I wasn't referring to Grice but to anyone who insists that spots cannot "mean." If that can only be done by saying "People who claim that spots cannot mean," consider it done."
ReplyDeleteSure. I´m not sure about Grice. I think he was partially jocular. Recall his "Meaning" was never meant to be published. He delivered it as a lecture in 1948 for the Oxford Philosophical Society. He had been lecturing on Peirce as a University Lecturer, or Tutorial Fellow. He was in a campaign of restoring "mean" back into the philosophical lexicon after Peirce had opted for "sign", "symbol" and "icon" instead. I may drop a few notes I compiled on those distinctions as seen by Grice. Have a look at them when you have the time, and feel free to report back. JLS
"Mean" etymologically speaking is not "mean" lexicographically speaking. The word means what standard English speakers use it to mean, and I believe standard English speakers use it to mean "to be conclusive evidence of" or "to be relevantly consistent only with" or "to give one sound reason to infer." I believe that, as a student of such things, I am entitled to say what standard usage is, even though, etymologically speaking, I am only "entitled" to the things to which I have been given title, n'est-ce pas? To reconsider "mean," I must reconsider my claim that usage trumps etymology. And you haven't provided any argument to that effect.
ReplyDeleteI quote direct from Chapman, her bio of _Grice_ Macmillan, 2006: "The mention of 'people' [in "Meaning"] is not backed up by any specific references, but the unpublished papers Grice KEPT THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE include a series of lecture notes from Oxford in which he presents and discusses the 'theory of signs' put forward [by Peirce]." "These suggest that Grice's account of ['meaning'] developed IN PART from his REACTION to Peirce, whose general approach would have appealed to him." "Peirce was anti-sceptical, committed to describing a system of signs elaborate enough to account for the classification of the complex world around us, a world INDEPENDENT of our perception of it, and available for analysis by means of those perceptions." "His theory of signs was therefore based on a notion of CATEGORIES as the building blocks of knowledge; signs explain the ways we REPRESENT the world to ourselves and others in thought and in language." "In a paper from 1867, Peirce reminds his readers 'that the FUNCTION of CONCEPTIONS is to REDUCE the manifold of SENSUOUS impressions to UNITY, and that the validity of a conception consists in the IMPOSSIBILITY of reducing the content of consciousness to unity without the introduction of it.'" ... "Conceptions, and the signs we use to identify them, comprise our understanding of the world. Signs act by representing objects to the understanding of receivers, but there are a number of different ways in which this may take place." "There are some representations 'whose relation to their object is a mere community of some QUALITY, and there representations may be termed _likenesses_' such as for example the relationship between a portrait and a person."
ReplyDeleteChapman continues: "The relations of other representations to their object 'consists in a correspondence in fact, and these may be termed _indices_ or _signs_." "A weathercock represents the direction of the wind in this way. In the third case, there is no such factual links, merely conventional ones."
"Here the relation of representation to object 'is an imputed character, which are the same as _general signs_ and these may be termed _symbols_.'"
"Such is the relationship between word and object ... Peirce later extended the general term 'sign' to cover all these cases, and used the specific terms 'icon', 'index' and 'symbol' for his three classes of representation."
Chapman continues: "In his lectures and notes on "Peirce's theory of signs", Grice analyses Peirce's use of the term 'sign', and proposes to equate it with a geneal understanding of 'means'.
His chief argument in favour of this equation is that Peirce is not using 'sign' in anything RECOGNISABLE as its EVERYDAY or ordinary sense. In a piece of textbook ordinary language philosophy, he argues that 'in general the use (unannounced) of technical or crypto-technical terms leads to NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, obscuring proper questions and raising IMPROPER ones' [emphasis mine. JLS]
Chapman continues: "Restating Peirce's claims about 'signs' in terms of 'means' draws attention to shared features of a range of items commonly referred to as having 'meaning' as well as hightlighting some important differences between Peirce's categories of 'index' and 'symbol'. A fuller exegesis of this in "Heinz meanz beanz", this blog.
For a fuller exegesis of this, then, I recommend "Heinz meanz beanz", this blog.
ReplyDeleteKramer wants an argument. Against his trumping. He writes, cleverly,
ReplyDelete""Mean" etymologically speaking is not "mean" lexicographically speaking. ... To reconsider "mean," I must reconsider my claim that usage trumps etymology. And you haven't provided any argument to that effect."
Usage trumps etymology. Mmm. Counterargument? This is starting too epagogic. We want diagogic. Grice trusts that evidence for a thesis should be affirmative rather than via negation of its rivals. But let me see my point of view. I have to elaborate on this. Where I live, nobody gives a hoot for etymology. Romance etymology is pretty difficult. Nobody has the 6 volumes of Corrominas, or the Italian Vulgar Etymological Dictionary from Classical Ovidian sources.
So to say that ETYMOLOGY is important is, in my milieu, to be a fastidious reactionary!
In the Anglo-phone world, it is all the difference. I recall Borges was FASCINATED with English etymology, and so am I. Horn, whom I met, used to say, ¨You certainly know your onions¨. He had lived in France for years, and knew the idiom. But he meant, Onions, The author of The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
Usage I´m never comfy with. I know ALL about the OED. Murray, and Company. The idea of the NED, New English Dictionary. Based on descriptive historical principles. My claim that
Etymology trumps usage
is meant sarcastically. As when I say that all bulgarians are buggers, or all buggers bulgarians. To bug is short for ¨bulgarian¨, where this referred to a heterodox.
I find etymology fascinating, even if false. As in rare-bit Welsh. Horn has talked about this in the prestigious Elizabethan Club in New Haven (a college organisation). His paper, entitled, "Etymythology" cares to quote me. He was considering
He is the spitten image of his father.
Horn claims that the etymythology here is the dynamics of fluids: the sperm in the spit. Etc. Etymythology plays a role among _some_. Some people don´t care, but I do. If I had a tutee, I would NOT fail _her_ if she cared to argue that etymythology is not important. I mean, to each her own! But personally, as a non-standard non-Anglo-phone, I have nothing to go BY but etymythology. I cannot trust MY usages, because they don´t count.
Fortunately, most people, anglo-phones too, whom I have met, have realised that etymythology is important, if only in a jocular way. I find that "How clever language is", which Grice expressed to Warnock, works both synchronically and diachronically.
When I had to pass a course on "Romance etymythology", I was all about Grice -- and the HOTEL. How animal came to mean what it means via semantic narrowing or broadening.
In general, diachronic linguists -- I recall a recent, "History of the Spanish language", edited by C. U. P. -- is all about METONYMY in language change. Language change, even of idioms and ever-current slang, ever-fashionable and out of fashion slang, is all about metaphor and metonymy. Metaphor and metonymy are figures of rhetoric which work alla Grice ´conversational implicatures´. What was originally a conversational implicature may well get ´fossilised´, Grice writes, into a "conventional implicature", where we no longer care. But at one time, the choice was rational and individualistic. When ¨has¨ started to be use to form the present perfect, for example: John has the apple eaten. John has eaten the apple. This as Traugott, who teaches at Berkeley points out, is best seen as conversational implicature gotten fossilised. So I think there are linguistic and philosophical arguments for my position. And they are not meant to REFUTE _your_ view to the contrary. I cannot, fortunately, prescribe your descriptions! (But then you will prescribe my descripts!. :)).
I like etymology, and I think it is interesting and useful. But I do not see how it can negate usage, which is what denying "those spots mean measles" implies it can do.
ReplyDeleteThis summer, July 4 falls on a Sunday. "Falls?" Can a date "fall"? From where? Will it be pushed? Or will it jump? Can we say it "plunged"? We know that July 4 will be a Sunday. So, does "falls on" mean "will be"?
Why does "falls on" work? It works, I submit, because of the metaphor and metonymy you mention. There are aspects of falling - in the sense that rain falls - that include a variation in potential landing spot. Dates do not fall at random - but they feel as though they do. We sense that falling things relate to points on the ground analagously to how dates relate to days of the week. This relationship is an aspect of falling, and this aspect of the word (metonymy) is deemed adequate to recruit that word for a wholly new usage. But once that happens, "falls on" does, indeed, mean "will be" in the specific context in which it is used.
Maybe what I am saying is that your notion of etymology is too constrained, that what I have done above is "etymology." But if that is so, then the one-to-one relationship inherent in "mean" metonymously. i.e., etymologically, authorizes the use of "mean" in any situation in which a one-to-one relationship exists, as in those spots and measles.
How does that grab you?
It grabs me fine. In WoW he considers "causation" & it strikes me that most of what he wrote then, back in 1953 (WoW 164) applies to his own thoughts on 'mean': "We might have a tendency to read into what the common sense philosopher would regard as typical causal transactions between natural objects or events the MISTAKEN & ABSURD IDEA that something is _willing_ something else to happen (In which case) we shall still have IMPORTED INTO OUR USE of the word 'cause' AN IMPLICATION which will make objectionable the application of the word to NATURAL events" (164). I'm suggesting that the same phenomenon occurs when Anglo-Phones say that "spots mean measles." I would go back seriously to your first comment on this thread. I HAVE to be provocative. Philosophers of the Gricean type are into "analysis". You propose that there is a roundabout way for 'mean', which you argue, in your idiolect, is =df. is conclusive evidence of. The average "we" (majestic?) American use: x means y iff x is conclusive evidence of y. I would be fastidious about 'conclusive' & 'evidence'. Never mind 'of'. Why not "for" y? But seriously, some evidence is NOT conclusive. And evidence is the FACTIVE verb par excellence. So I wonder if you would agree with Grice when he writes, and I found more or less exactly the same words in Hobbes, Computatio: "It occurs to me that the ROOT idea in the notion of 'mean', which in one form or adaptation or another would apply to both cases (of natural & non-natural) is that IF x means that y then this is equivalent to, or at least contains as a part of what it means, the claim that y is a consequence of x. That is, what the cases of natural and non-natural meaning have in common is that, on some interpretation of the notion of consequence, y's being the case is a consequence of x" (WoW 292). Now, 'consequence' possibly can be interpreted in NON-CAUSAL terms. Logical consequence for example, that logicians are enamoured with, does not seem "causal". So one has to be careful here. Now, one complication here may be Seth Sharpless. T. Wharton has quoted Seth, my friend, in his Pragmatics book. For Seth, as for Peirce, 'mean' is TRIADIC. I.e. it's never just "x means that y" but _to z_, where z is the interpretant. One has to be careful with 'conclusive evidence'. Only in 'factive' cases. So it would be up to you to weaken the conditions for other looser usages of 'mean' (e.g. by yawning, he means that he is bored). Grice's discovery, much applauded by Hart in his Rev. of Holloway (Phil. Quart. 1952) was in fact the sort of pragmatic contradiction in things like, "Those black clouds mean rain, but I don't think it is going to rain". I find that impeccable English, but Grice finds it contradictory. "Anyone who says, "Those black clouds mean rain", or "Those black clouds mean that it would rain" WOULD PRESUMABLY be committing him-self to its being the case that it WILL rain, or that it DID rain." (291)
ReplyDeleteOr to go back to the original "Meaning" (213) it's the first test: ENTAILMENT, which is a notion coined by Moore. "I cannot say, "Those spots meant measles, but he hadn't got measles', and I cannot say 'The recent budget means that we shall have a hard year, but we shan't have". That is to say, in cases like the above, _x meant that p_ and _x means that p_ entail _p_." This was typed by Strawson so one has to be careful as to what Grice actually hand-wrote. Note the emphasis on "cannot". Toulmin, who died last year, was into "cannot". But note that in his "Meaning Revisited" Grice is way more cautious. It's all a question of PRESUMPTION. "Presumably" anyone who says this, means that.
I think we are getting hung up on precision. Wouldn't Grice's quantity maxim apply to the precision of the words we use, so that we need only be as precise as the situation requires? Thus, "he's a sixty-year-old man" can mean that he is not less nor more than that 60, or it can mean that he is about 60, all depending on the degree of precision demanded by the situation. Likewise, the meaning of "means" is only as precise as the conversation demands. And sometimes, that's not very precise at all.
ReplyDelete"Those spots mean measles" invokes a meaning of "mean" that is not precise enough to be subjected to the sort of analysis you propose in your comment. In the narrow context of measles, "mean" means "permit the inference that you have." The inference may arise from causation or from any other highly correlated association between spots and measles of which I am aware.
I disagree, therefore, with the claim that If x means that y then this is equivalent to, or at least contains as a part of what it means, the claim that y is a consequence of x. Y need only be highly correlated with x to make "x means y" a useful thing to say consistently with all of Grice's CP maxims.
Again, context rules. I can say "x means y" where x causes y or where x always precedes y, or where x always appears with y. And "always" might be replaced with "so often as to allow us to act as if always." This all works because the word "means" is being used metonymously on account of the one-to-one relationship entailed in the literal usage of "means," i.e., where, in any given context, "x means Y" states a (reliable) one-to-one relationship between x and y.
The metonymic process does not end, however. "Those black clouds mean rain, but I don't think it is going to rain" is nonsense. But "Black clouds usually mean rain, but, despite these black clouds, I don't think it is going to rain" is not. "Usually mean" warps "mean" even further by applying it to a one-to-one relationship so tenuous that we can deny it in any given case. It seems to me we are in a sense doing a second level of metonymy. Whereas "those spots mean measles" riffs, if you will, on the one-to-one nature of the literal use of "mean," "black clouds usually mean rain" riffs on the associational aspect of the spots/measles usage, dropping the sufficiency implicit in the measles version to create one of those two-word thingies ("usually mean") that I wrote about elsewhere. At this point, there is no way to get at what "mean" means, as it is merely a component of a new two-word sentence building block. Resistance is futile.
Mmm. A delight to have your variations on a theme by Grice. "??Black clouds mean rain but it's not going to rain" "is, [indeed] nonsense." I don't think 'nonsense' is the word Grice would use, more like 'cannot'. But I take your point. Philosophers of the Gricean ilk had been criticised in having given the DATUM of use, or worse, USAGE, a transcendental quality that it lacks. Mundle, Critique of Ling. Philosophy. OTOH and while I mark "??" to signal this pragmatic inconsistency, you propose the impeccable "Black clouds USUALLY mean rain but it's not going to rain." "[Now] "[u]sually mean" warps "mean" even further by applying it to a one-to-one [tenuous] relationship". Right. I don't usually use 'usually'. So there. You go on: "It seems to me we are in a sense". In a way? Having brought up to distrust senses, "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity", I'm ever changing my senses into ways, which apparently Grice did not mind multiplying -- vide his WayS of words. "...doing a second level of metonymy". I'm fascinated you bought the metonymy theory that I came across in, of all places, this CUP History of the Spanish Language by one Pettit. I may have to go back to that. Since I believe that metaphor and metonymy are CANCELLABLE implicatures, i.e conversational, not conventional ones. Thus, what I would be objecting by my hanging up with the Speranza participial(etymologically, 'x' means that y)is that I'm denying that a conversational implicature can, as Grice apparently freely allows, can get 'fossilised' into a conventional one (WoW, iii). Once a conversational implicature, always a conversational implicature -- where even the comma is otiose. You go on: "'Those spots mean measles' [only] riffs ... on the one-to-one nature of the literal use of "mean" and to this "new two-word sentence building block." Mmm. Good, but unlearnable? Incidentally, you refer to "our F-en language" etc. But Davidson and I follow him, is ever cautious. In his "A nice derangement of epitaphs" (PGRICE) he famously claimed, "There is no such a thing as a language". Think Sicilian. It seems to me that if "means" ceases to to give us a clue as to "usually means", then you break down COMPOSITIONALITY. I'd rather break a Ming vase. I would be saddened if compositionality is broken on the virtue (as it were) of our usually clumsy 'usually'. I would have a thing to say about your 'literal' use. I don't believe, really, in literal senses (Vide Kilgariff, "I don't believe in word senses"). These are average means, clumsy ways we humans have to talk about things. But we shouldn't personalise them, and turn them into abstract entities. The importation of 'literal' allows for "Literally, spots mean measles", which is precisely the point I was arguing against. It seems that if 'litera' has anything to do with this, is precisely that the 'literal' of "means" is cognate with "mind", and so, literally spots rather do NOT mean measles. But I think it's worth considering, your 'Those spots USUALLY mean measles, but not in THIS case.' Oddly, the Greek drink, 'usu' is usually thought to have acquired its name through a misconception as to what the containers' labels meant, "to be used in Marseille". So there!
ReplyDeleteI should add a couple points:
ReplyDeletei. I don't think, following the thread, "Naturalism without Tears", whatever that means, Grice was seriously a 'naturalist' about meaning. In the present debate, I think one can see he was more clearly interested in denying polysemy of 'mean'. Do not multiply senses beyond necessity. While the early Grice did have 'non-natural' and 'natural' as two SENSES of the word 'mean', he is way more cautious in "Meaning Revisited", where he trusts 'mean-N' and 'mean-NN', as he abbreviates them, cannot be like 'vyse' and 'vice' -- "he's caught in the grip of a vyse/vice".
ii. The word 'etymon', actually, may refer to 'sense'. And it's interesting that as per my previous quote, Grice refers to this "root" idea of "mean". Precision may be not something we should get hung up with, though. But his idea of 'root' looks cleverly similar to the Grecian reflections on 'etyma' as the _true_ root of words. 'Etymon' means, 'the true' in old Greek. So, there is like a coincidence here in that, by stressing the etymology of 'mean', or any other old word, we are stressing eo ipso the word's root. Linguists, to confuse things, distinguish between a root and a stem.
Etc.
I'm denying that a conversational implicature can, as Grice apparently freely allows, can get 'fossilised' into a conventional one.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't this claim require argument? Why do you hold this view? I'm with Grice (as I understand him via your comment) that use can become usage - that a word can acquire a meaning by virtue of its being so hospitable to certain situations. What starts as poetic license becomes common parlance becomes standard language. Why not?
Thus, the phrase "in a sense" says something quite complex about why the word being invoked is appropriate to the situation. We think of metonymy as something simplistic, like "Wall Street" for the firms of a sort that are predominantly located there, but that's a physical metonymy - real firms on a real Street. But the use of metonymy involves a mental process that can be applied to logical attributes, especially connotations. To "demonize" someone, for example, is not to turn someone into a demon, but to assign to him one aspect of demons - loathesomeness. That process, I would argue (or at least "buy" as an argument) is what we do when we create metonymy. And we can signal that we are about to use the product of this process by attaching the phrase "in a sense" to the word, with no regard whatever to what "sense" means in any other context. The phrase is a signal about the level of literalness of the word(s) about to be uttered. Cooperativeness demands no less.
Meanwhile, I don't understand your comment on "literally." Whatever the etymologies, one would never say "literally, spots mean measles," so any comment on that locution strikes me as moot. It is not "allowed," because it is not done.
My overall claim is that you are demanding that language be less reliant on metonymy than it actually is in life. My view, as a verb-fan, is that language is a behavior, not a "thing." It only has rules to the extent that the occasional need for precision (as in the law) naturally requires a form of linquistic "legal tender," a form of delivery that will be regarded as satisfactory notice of what is being communicated. For a sentence to be legal tender, it must follow rules for determining whether it is legal tender.
Suppose I tell you that it's forping out. You go outside and get wet. You complain that I didn't warn you of the rain. I say "I TOLD you it was forping." You say "'Forping' isn't an English word, so you're saying it does not count as warning me that I would get wet if I went outside." Touche'. Likewise, if I had said "It's ringing outside." "Ringing" doesn't mean "raining," i.e., "ringing" is not legal tender of the notion of liquid precipitation.
So, if I say to you "those spots mean measles," have I made legal tender of the idea that one should infer from those spots that you have measles? I am arguing for the position that whether a use consitutes legal tender is an existential thing (except, maybe in France, where the Academie Francaise may actually get to say so), not an etymological thing. Once a usage becomes legal tender, we cannot reject it. We can only marvel at how it became such.
And I do. Marvel at your tenderness in your treating me!
ReplyDeleteSure: it would be odd to say
i. Those spots mean, literally, that he has measles.
My thoughts on 'literally' were corrupted by Brigitte Nerlich. She has written _academically_ on it. She is particularly infuriated by uses of 'literally'. "Literally, it was raining".
You are right that my 'fossilisation not allowed' would require some argument. Let me quote from Grice on this then, since 'fossilisation' is my own.
I cannot right now locate the Grice reference, but 'started life' is used by Davis in this pretty good book -- I collect a certain type of book -- called, "Implicature". He expands or inpands on it in his essay in the online Stanford dict. of Philo:
Davis, who teaches in Virginia, writes:
"It is plausible that conversational implicature conventions arose in much the same way idioms do. ... “
(i) He kicked the bucket.
started life as a metaphor, and thus an implicature. Some utterers used it as a metaphor to implicate that Jack died."
Rather than "is dead". I find a world of difference in 'death' idioms: some mean someone is dead, others that someone DIED.
Your "he bought the bank" seems to mean, 'he died', rather than 'he is dead'. But some work either way, since I suppose it's a sufficient and necessary condition of someone being dead that he died, but not vice versa? Or versa vice?
Davis continues:
"The metaphor caught on and became conventional."
Oddly, we call them 'dead', too.
"Although it has not to my knowledge been historically attested, it is plausible that the use of “Some S are P” (or its translation in some earlier language) to implicate “Not all S are P” similarly started life as a nonce implicature that caught on and spread."
"The difference is that with idioms, the metaphor “died,” and what previously was implied came to be meant directly, creating a non-compositional meaning for the expression."
"Consequently, idiomatic meanings have been “detached,” whereas conventional implicatures are “non-detachable.”"
Davis concludes his note with: "The study of the origin of implicature conventions falls in the domain of historical linguistics."
and Speranza Studies.
"
I suppose my emphasis on the recovery of the conversationality of the conventionality of the implicatum -- is _just_ me?
ReplyDeleteI don't like to rely on 'rote', as I think Anglo-Phones call it. Memory, heart. I like to KNOW the rationale behind the most idiotic of usages. My mentor in Latin studies, J. Solodow, was like that. "Pate de fois" for example, has the most ridiculous of histories.
"Grog", too.
It's all about nonce implicatures running amok and wild like pansies getting coralised.
And I think Grice allows for
- conversational implicatures getting conventionalised.
So, it's not like a breach of a Gricean principle.
On the other hand, he is never too clear as to what makes a conventional implicature conventional.
I'm retrieving some posts I submitted elsewhere to this blog, and have just did one "Poor but Honest", or "Honest but poor", I forget. "But" is a case in point. It's strictly 'conventional', in this rather idiosyncratic use by Grice of 'conventional'. But a full analysis of 'but' as arriving to its present form via 'by out' may illuminate ME.
I know what you're talking though. It's good old Saussure about the irrelevancy of diachrony in synchronic brains. Been there, done that, got the mug!
--- Apparently Saussure, who introduced a few dogmas in the so-called science of linguistics -- was a bit of a bore. For him, 'arbor' -- the example he used in his Traite de la lingusitique generale -- was "acoustic image" of 'tree'. Whatever the root of the word is is _immaterial_ for the trade of communication.
But we are not all Phoenicians!
I don't like "fossilized." I prefer "assimilated." A coinage becomess a usage. It happens.
ReplyDeleteThe diachronic/synchronic distinction seems to me not a useful basis for exclusion of inquiry. How we got where we are in language is a useful inquiry because it tells us how we get where we are going in more than language. It tells us something about how our brains work. But, and here I suppose I side with Saussure, it does not tell us how to speak or write. Only synchronic analysis does that. You seem to use etymology prescriptively, whereas I would argue that only synchronic conclusions can be used that way: we can say what is legal linguistic tender, but we cannot say what ought to be or not be linguistic legal tender by reason of its etymology. (In America, we say "got the tee shirt.")
You gotta love a guy who is interested in "tree's" roots. Where else would one start?
An interesting thing about metaphoric usages is that they can only operate away from their literal milieu. I can say that the tree is at the foot of the mountain, but not that my chin is at the foot of my face. There is no logical or etymological reason why that should be so, but it is.
Bought the farm, not the bank. And yes, it means "died" not "is dead." Of course, "died" can be used to mean "is dead" in a certain context. Here, I think we're trying to avoid connotation, the avatar of metonymic metastasis. "Dead" has a lot of figurative uses. Thus, when feminists talk about DWEM's they are, I think, suggesting that "dead" entails obsolescence and irrelevance. But to say someone died as a way of saying he is dead is to negate all but the biological meaning of "dead." So, in some contexts, what matters is that the person died, but in others what matters is that he is physically but not connotatively dead.
Kramer writes:
ReplyDelete"I can say that the tree is at the foot of the mountain, but not that my chin is at the foot of my face. There is no logical or etymological reason why that should be so, but it is."
Right. I'm happy to say a new contributor to this blog is one Larry M. Tapper -- he contributed or commented on "Philosophers who never published" already. We are on record, I think, as having discussed
the mouth of the river.
This is a favourite type of metaphor with Tapper. Also 'the leg of the chair' versus the Victorianism, "the limbs of the lady".
I recall sharing with him the double oddity of 'mouth of the river'. Literally, it should be the _arsehole_ of the river. But as Kramer would say, deal.
On the implicatures of being dead, Kramer writes:
ReplyDelete"Thus, when feminists talk about DWEM's they are, I think, suggesting that "dead" entails obsolescence and irrelevance."
Right. I wanted to write an epitaph on Grice's graveyard, but the fact that he is cremated (or _was_ cremated?) doesn't help. I wanted to inscribe,
"We should treat those who are
dead and great as if they were
great and living"
-- or words to that (perlocutionary or illocutionary) effect. He writes thus in connection with Leibniz.
He notes that Leibniz, like Queen Anne, is dead. But still, Leibniz was a 'great' one. So it does pay to translate 'monad' as 'guise'. But with a minor figure it doesn't pay to try and introject in shoes of a lesser size.
So I disagree with the feminists. There is a guide to the classics -- I collect Loebs -- that goes, "A guide to the DWEM: from Socrates to Plotinus".
To me, "dead" brings respectibility to one's inquiries.
Kramer reflects on 'being dead':
ReplyDelete"[T]o say someone died as a way of saying he is dead is to negate all but the biological meaning of "dead." So, in some contexts, what matters is that the person died, but in others what matters is that he is physically but not connotatively dead."
As a dodo, yes.
But I'm surprised you find 'dying' a biological thingy. Witters denied that, and I think I'm with Witters. He remarks, obscurely as is his wont, "To die is not an experience of life", or words, in German, to that perlocutionary effect.
I discussed elsewhere with McEvoy what Witters may be meaning by that. I argued that 'dying' is not really something you can experience, since you have to be 'alive' to experience things.
McEvoy disagrees, but he thinks one starts dying the moment one is born (one stars living -- he draws on Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione).
What intrigues me about 'dead' is something I heard when someone was commenting on the funeral of Frank Sinatra. "Frank Sinatra was paraded along Fifth Avenue". The writer found this obscene. "Surely _he_ wasn't paraded. His corpse was." Dunno.
The implicature being that if you are dead you cannot be paraded?
As the pseudo-Confucianism goes, "Small inaccuracy avoid long explanation."
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, and he is a DWOM, right? Confucius I mean.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, there is something transcategorial about 'dead' idioms:
(i) Jack is dead.
(ii) He broke his crown as he tumbled down from the hill.
(ii) _does_ report and event in Jack's life. But (ii) does not. In fact, I would go as far as to apply Grice's views on "Vacuous Names" (in Quine, the festschrift) to that.
(i) Jack is dead.
Surely, "Jack" is, to use Grice's parlance, a 'vacuous name' in that context or scenario. We do not want to create a "Meinongian jungle" Grice writes.
For Meinong, there are _things_ and there are _irreal_ things, like "Jack" when Jack is dead.
Yet, I suppose that if I follow your observations on physical versus logical devices, "Jack" is a mere physical device to express the _lack_ of Jack in "Jack is dead".
Similary, when you wrote, perhaps slightly inaccurately,
>"[T]o say someone died
>as a way of saying he is dead
>is to negate all but the
>biological meaning of "dead.""
or _lack_ of biological meaning?
In a way it relates to Grice's inoperancy. An ex-person is, for Grice, a dead-person. But in any case, since this is getting or turning into the Implicatures of Being Dead, while that header does sound on the macabre side, I'm going to start a new blog post on that. It's free, right?
Forgive my being so brutish, but I think observations about how dead people aren't people, or dying isn't "bilogical" belong in the category of "We drive on the parkway and park on the driveway." The language has quirks.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a limerick to provide a home for a pun:
Speranza's diachronics are pure.
Synchronics he'd have us abjure.
I can't say I agree
But it's all Greek to me.
In short, I'm just not Saussure.
Excellent. Will comment shortly. Meanwhile something I retrieved from a more extended discussion I have had elsewhere, and where I quote in full this website that amused me.
ReplyDeletehttp://plaza27.mbn.or.jp/~homosignificans/fallacy.htm
"As for the verb 'to mean,' Grice classifies
its uses roughly into two classes in his much
influential article [...] According to him,
this verb is used in its "natural meaning"
as well as in its "non-natural meaning." [sic]
For example, he insists, in the sentence
"Those spots mean measles".
the verb 'mean' has only a natural meaning. To say that those spots mean measles naturally is to say that there is some causation between
the spots and measles. They have called this
sort of sign that consists of a natural tie
between cause and result a 'symptom' whose
etymolgy is the same as that of the word
'syndrome.' They originally mean 'that which falls together with something.'"
Talk of 'falling on a date'. (on the _right_ side of the date, and on a dark night too).
"The orthodox semiotics in which Grice holds an important position has recognized those signs that consist of the factual relation between one thing and another, the typical example of which is causation. This type of
sign includes a symptom that is the subject of this essay and an index in the Peircenian sense. As mentioned above, they have called signs of this kind 'natural signs'. According to this tradition, facial expressions such as blushing, widening one's eyes, yelling, etc.,
are nothing but natural signs. It is said that
excitement of some area of the central nervous system causes anger. This cause, it is said, brings about a remarkable increase of blood quantity in one's face so that blushing of one's face occurs. Such a category of orthodox semiotics, however, seems to be
*****extremely misleading******
because such phenomena, though those are called signs, have virtually no intrinsic
meaning."
"They are just trivial events that occur in nature."
Trivial? Black clouds? They can spoil many a weekend at the Hamptons!
"It is by accident that they come to be signs. The intention to communicate something to others does not necessarily belong to symptoms. Still less they are not such phenomena that contain the intention to let others notice the intention to inform in the same way as linguistic signs do. They are signs as far as a human being virtually takes them as signs. Symptoms may be included among signs but only accidentally. They aren't to be called inherent signs."
Beautiful limerick. And I'll treasure your adage,
ReplyDelete"You gotta love the guy who's into
the root of 'trees'. Where else
would you start?"
Or words to that effect. Oddly, Grice uses the mathematical sign of the square of Pythagoras to represent 'root'. But it's serious enough to merit a blog post. Plus, I have to paste the symbol.
I agree that you are not Saussure. I once got quoted in an essay by one Stidd. Lovely man. He was analysing the contrasting implicatures between.
i. I'm no Saussure.
ii. I'm not Saussure.
He found that ii is trivial, but ii is not, since the implicature is that, well, God knows.
√arbor
ReplyDeletethe root of 'arbor'.
Saussure thinks he is being clever in having 'arbor' in Latin. For him, as for Linnaeus, concepts are Latin, acoustic images are French.
When I was on Long Island sound -- I was living next to Chaffinch Park in Guilford, CT -- I found that there are no chaffinchs ever observed in Guilford. I wrote to the Guilford Courier about that, but forgot to post the letter. (*). But I keep the note.
Latin names for things can be lovely. But surely 'arbor' is not specific enough.
Reminds one of D. H. Lawrence. Typical Englishman, strolling in Tuscany, asks his fellow Companion, an Italian,
"What is this?"
"A flower", the Italian replied, "un fiore". Surely D. H. wanted to know the Latin.