---- By J. L. Speranza
----------- for the Grice Club
--------FURTHER TO THE DISQUISITIONS WITH L. J. Kramer on clefts and pseudo-clefts, and lambda operations, I direct the attention to Grice's Modus. Clark and Haviland suggest something like, "Try to construct your utterance such that the addressee has one and only one direct antecedent for any direct antecedent for any given information and that it is the intended antecedent"
Traugott, on the other hand, has focused in her "Syntax" for the Cambridge Handbook of the History of English, on the diachrony of the 'it' clauses. Clark and Haviland may be relying on the locus classicus on the lambda operator in terms of LF (logical form) by Atlas & Levinson, "It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form". The very collocation 'it' in 'it-cleft' makes it for something related to English rather than linguistics, but I see Kramer's important point! Grice has played with the lambda so I will try to retrieve further.
Of course, I'm never too happy with keep adding maxims. We do see that Grice has 10 maxims making his thing a decalogue, "decalogue", this blog. But Clark and Haviland, who are psycholinguists rather than philosophers, perhaps don't care, and a philosopher has to be specially cautious as to whether their 'maxim of antecedence' -- the contract of given-new, so-called -- is not covered already by the original 10 maxims postulated by Grice. In fact, by no. 10: make your move such that its optimal reply follows smoothly. Much has been written on 'referentiality' or lack thereof of 'clefts', so that may and will relate too.
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but I see Kramer's important point!
ReplyDeleteBut, then, why wouldn't you?! Are you implicating that only one of my points is important? If so, ya gotta say which one. If not, then you need to cancel that implicature post haste before someone gets their nose out of joint.
Logically, of course, you can see one or more of my one or more important points, but with which of those four permutations are we dealing? God, this language shit is hard. (I'm finding it difficult to keep up with myself.)
Seriously, JL, which point of mine "buts" which point in your comment?
Well, if you see more than one of my one important point, certain issues will arise...
ReplyDeleteOK -- sorry about that: a very simple point. I was meaning to say that "it" is a matter of English applied linguistics, and that I thus don't think I recall a philosopher discussing "it" as per a title of an essay.
ReplyDeleteThe people I quote, J. D. Atlas and S. C. Levinson, did have their important paper on "It-clefts, informativeness and logical form" indeed published in Linguistics and Philosophy which was a hallmark since 1981, but I'm afraid I never seriously studied (They apply the so-called 'lambda' calculus).
So I was trying to note that your, Kramer's, point, regarding the "it" does have an important, general bearing on these issues, while I'm still somewhat at a loss because, to be able to say Gricean cool stuff, from My (Non-Native) perspective, I may need to know how 'it' connects, or interfaces, with:
a. matters of informativeness -- the topic/comment, new/given information contract between U and A. As you were saying, best info is left to the closing clauses. But it seems that the "it" cleft, while being precisely, anticipatory, would be a break to "be informative" at least at the level of what-is-said (the three first categories: Quan, Qual and Rela -- 'it' doesn't really say anything) but not at the level of how what-is-said is said. As you say, "it" directs the attention to what follows "it". (Plus, what Clark and Haviland, they being psychologists, may also go over my head in that this 'maxim of antecedence' they posit, may amount to strict psycho-linguistic processing of some experimental kind and perhaps ad hoc for their protocol).
b. Matters on the history of English as studied by Traugott (ref. given above). I don't think the Anglo-Saxons would use, "It occurs to me that some Vikings are about to alight from the boats". It sounds somewhat French? Etc. But they possibly did say "het reinet", it rains, but I don't think the 'it' of 'it rains' is anticipatory in the way that the 'it' of "I find it awkward that Meryl Streep should not have gotten the Oscard", or something. ("It surprises me that she didn't" -- "It" strikes me as odd that Bullock should get the Oscar instead." "It amuses me to think that Helen Mirren thought that Colin Firth would get the Oscar for bed actor", etc.).
Yes, the expletive "it" and what I call the "appositive" it are different. I'm writing a long post about it. As usual, relating it to HPG will be your mission, should you choose to accept it.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, the "it" doesn't say anything. What I'm saying is that inclusion of a word that "does not say anything" is not ipso facto a violation of "be brief."
I think I disagree that such a word breaks "Be informative." The maxim is directed to U, and maybe to the utterance, but not necessarily to every word in the utterance. In the alternative, as we laywers say, if silence can be informative, so can the use of a word that "says" nothing. Does metalinguistic "informativeness" not count? The "it" tells U what sort template to use to translate the sentence. That's quite useful information for someone who wants his U's not to waste his time.
Good. Look forward to it. Yes, silence is golden, as they say. And sure, 'meta-informativeness' also counts. I was revising Grice WoW:iii and P&CI, and he considers, in passing, things like
ReplyDelete(i) It is raining.
(ii) It is true that it is raining.
But does not expand on the 'it' of (ii) which _is_ 'expletive' or 'extra-positional'. In P&CI he considers
(iii) The King of France is not bald.
(iv) It is not the case that the King of France is bald.
as _semantically_ equipolent. So indeed we need a meta-analysis here. I agree that if you add the 'it' you are NOT flouting 'be brief' if there's nothing else you can do -- regarding the templates, etc. It's not SUCH a long word, anyway. (I mean, compared to others. In fact only a one-letter word would be briefer (or shorter) than 'it', and there are not so many of them anyway, o!
It was good Grice formulated the maxim as "Be brief" rather than "Don't be long".
oh lambda lambda lambda!
ReplyDeletearchaic Curry land! As there are more than one functorials, you might as well count them all. Then apply some relevant or other restrictive condition rather than ahusting in pleonasm.
Basic lamda calculus is a taxonomic device, unless it is used without ordering, i.e. randomly, which could usually be the case.
King of France, bald? or baldfaced fiat? Here's a freelanced cleft implicature:
.5494099+
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has signed into law a new anti-abortion measure that could punish women for having a miscarriage, reported Democracy Now March 10. The Republican-backed bill would allow women to be charged with murder if they commit "an intentional or knowing act" that causes a miscarriage. The bill initially included language that would have also punished women for "reckless" acts, but that language was removed. Despite the revision, however, critics still say the measure could target women for all kinds of actions, including staying with an abusive partner, the article reported.
Yes, 'reckless' acts can be a trick. Then there's reck and wreck, which can confuse both a man and a woman, etc.
ReplyDelete