Monday, February 8, 2010

Supercalifriagilisticexpialidocious: Grice on compositionality

Semanticists, which Grice on the whole underestimated, speak or spoke of

Compositionality.

The main example, by Tarski's disciple, R. Sherman, is:

"x is supercalifriagilisticexpialidocious"
is true iff
x is upercalifriagilisticexpialidocious.

Which Grice finds _otiose_: "x is an unbound variable, and until the domain is narrowed down, how are we suppose to grasp the utterer's intention in the alleged adage?"

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