Those spots mean "measles"

In his "Meany: the pre-sequel", Tim W. writes:

(words) to the effect that he is pleased that something owed something. He does use the word 'owe' in the past:

He writes:

I particularly enjoyed finding out
that the

'those spots mean measles'

was perhaps owed a sprinkling of
scare quotes (though surely not

'those spots mean "measles"'

- that would not do).

Right. Not sure about that would not do. Depends on who. Yogi Berra? I have a blog post here to the effect that he once went to a dinner in New Jersey and left as a gift an autographed photo. The owners were so pleased with it that they framed it.
It reads:

http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/perm9806-9810.html


Thanks for the "Great Food"

"Best Wishes"

--- The "unintended" "implicature" being: "Fortunately, the food is indeed great and their business is thriving despite the "endorsement."".

I'm less sure about

Those black clouds mean "rain".

In a way, Grice is clear about this. He writes of Utterer U,

(i) Those black clouds mean rain
or
(ii) Those black clouds MEANT that it will rain.
would PRESUMABLY be committing himself
to its being the case
(For (i)) that (ib) it will rain
or
(For (ii)) (iib) it did rain.

He adds that "it would seem RATHER odd"
to say:

(iii) Those black clouds meant "It will rain"
---

But that's a minor sleight of hand, for (i) is in the present tense, which agrees with the future tense of (ib), and (ii) is in the past tense, which agrees with the past tense of (iib).

Whereas in his (iii) he is mixing a past tense with a future tense. Surely that's odd enough.

In the "Meaning" (1948) thing he is perhaps sligthtly more careful -- for this was the more pedantic atmosphere of the Oxford Philosophy Society back in the day!

"For NONE of the ... examples
can a restatement be found
in which the verb "mean"
is followed by a sentence or
phrase in quotation marks.
Thus, "Those spots mean measles"
CANNOT be reformulated as
"Those spots meant 'measles'"
or as "THose spots meant 'he has
measles'"" (Wow:212)

-- Martinich has examined this (in his Dialectica paper). He applies Tarski's disquotational theory of truth plus the axiom of choice by which "means" is equivalent to "iff"

He gets things like, "Grice is wrong all over the place!" But we disagree.

Quotations marks _are_ a trick.

But so are 'that'-clauses.

After all, 'that' is, originally, a demonstrative; so that


Those spots 'mean' that he has measles.

would be rendered in German as:

Those spots mean that, he has measles.

I.e. they still use a comma after 'that', to signal that what follows is the ostensive display of what _that_ refers to, to wit: the proposition, 'he has measles'. To think that we can get away with quotation marks by just adding 'that' may not do.

In "Saying That" indeed, Davidson expresses that as:

Those spots mean that. He has measles.

or:

Those spots mean that: he has measles.

I always found 'that' to be the wrong demonstrative here. _I_ use "that" for rather distant things (medially distant). I use _this_ for closer things. And surely

he has measles

is close enough to

those spots mean

to justify the use of _this_ rather than _that_.

But I suppose the reason (as Kramer may agree) is that _that_ has lost all traces of that 'medial' demonstrative thing. As when we say,

"there you are: drunk again"

where "there" is not really _spatial_. Or

"There's a hole in my pocket"

where you are touching it, so it cannot be _that_ 'there'.

"Here's a hole in my pocket" won't do.

So back to the 'that'-clause.

We have to agree that mean-N or mean-NN, there's always the necessity as it were to trace the 'that'-clause behind the thing.

And the 'that' invites a 'proposition'. Etc.

But in any case, Tim W. is right that the interesting (perhaps) thing is that Stevenson _was_ scared, when he writes of

"a reduced temperature may at times
'mean' convalescence" (Stevenson 1944:) cited by Chapman p. 65.

It's perhaps a pity that Stevenson does not care to expand this into a 'that'-clause. I guess one scare is more than enough:

For expanding it would yield:

This reduced temperature
'means' that he is convalescent.

or more colloquially,

30C 'means' that he is convalescent.

I suppose

-30 'means' he is downright dead?

Oddly my mother never cared if my temperature is reduced. Only if it's augmented. Isn't that a better sign of convalescent.

Dr. Spock used to say: Termometres don't 'mean': anguished mothers do.