---- by JLS
-------- For the GC
----- UNWANTED IS A QUALIFIER THAT CAN REFER to 'children' --- and 'implicatures'. In the latter case, I find it a solecism, even if with charm. Since Kramer won't commit a solicism, I will refer to the one I may have commited.
We are discussing fragments of sentence, as in that wittily titled, post,
1. When it!
i.e. chronometrise your expletives.
----
and
2. Why do you wear tennis shoes?
--- Because.
I wrote of the distinction of "Because" with "Just because" (cfr. French, parce-que', Italian, 'perche'), and made the mistake, I find, of having use that monster, the 'unwanted implicature'!
No such thing! There's only two options:
A utters x -- therefore meaning/implicating p
B infers's A's meaning that p.
---- If B infers Anything OTHER THAN "p", as meant by A:
---- B is "misunderstanding" or non-understanding A.
That's the region of the so-mis-called "unwanted implicature".
I wrote:
""Because" makes better sense than the qualified "Just because": it is briefer and does not project the unwanted implicature that the thing has no weight."
Kramer comments, aptly, to the effect that there ARE wanted implicatures (is that redundant or what?) of 'just':
He writes, and not his apt use of 'not':
I would say that the
implicature is not always
unwanted.
--- Here is a good case to illustrate the maximal scope of 'not'. "not" is embedding my claim:
JL: That's an unwanted implicature
LJK: It's NOT, necessarily.
---- With Kramer going on, "for there is no such thing as an unwanted implicature".
In any case, Kramer goes on to provide interpretants for 'just' which _are_ wanted:
"Just because" may mean "I don't know why", whereas, the briefer "Because", especially uttered with an authoritative tone, may mean "I don't owe you an explanation even if I have one." (wording of implicata: Kramer's -- and very apt too).
So, I would correct myself and say that
-- If I use "just because" with "just" as a minimiser, "He's just dreaming", "He's just a loser", "He's just funny", "Just because" -- what has _Justice_ to do with this?
-- I may, I thought, have run the risk, a low one, on the face of it, that I was minimising the idea behind the 'reason' justifying the original clause, "I wear tennis shoes". With "I want it" -- "Just because I want it" as implicatum. A similar case may be as per:
Henninge's rewrite of "Grice Brie Party".
"`They were learning to draw inferences,' the Lit-Rat went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `And they drew all manner of implicating things -- everything that begins with a Q--' `Why with a Q?' queried Alice.`Why not?' queried the Zany Mother Friendly Meant. Alice was silent."
The 'why not?" Carrollian quip invites an implicatum or two. I will rely on the original Carroll context --
"`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with an M--' `Why with an M?' said Alice. `Why not?' said the March Hare. Alice was silent."
D: They drew all manner of things
----- everything that begins with an M--
A (interrupting, as it were). Why with an M?
MH: Why not?
"Alice was silent".
Propositions:
(1) Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie drew everything that begings with an M.
(2) Why?
(3) Because.
(4) Just because.
The Mad Hare goes 'metalinguistic', or 'proto-thetic' as Grice would have it:
Grice writes in his section on "Interrogatives" in the Kant Lectures, Stanford, 1977:
(repr. Gr. 2001):
"I have borrowed a little from an obscure branch of logic, once (but maybe no longer) practised, "called (I think) "proto-thetic", the main rite in which
was to quantify over (or through) [logical operators] ... If, for example, I ask (someone or other) whether John killed Cock Robin [in a protreptic frame of mind, as it were], I do not want him merely to will that I have a particular "Logical Quality" in mind which I believe to apply. Rather, what I want is _him_ to have one of the "Qualities" in mind which he wants _me_ to believe to apply. To meet this rather convoluted demand, supplementation must 'drag back' the [logical operator]"
"U to utter to H x '? |-:x [drew everything beginning with an M]' B _if_ (but not, then iff) U wills H to judge U to will that (E1¨)(H should will that U judges =
(x [drew everything beginning with an M]), in which schema, '(E1¨)' will "take on" the shape "(E1x)" but not in another schema, since "x" is the free variable within its scope."
The scenario is thus:
Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie drew everything beginning with an M.
Why?
Why not?
Just because (+> "I don't know")
Because (+> Why not? on occasion.
"Why are we not having dessert tonight?"
"Why not?" -- won't do. As much as the "just" won't do, as Kramer remarks. "Why not?" implicates something different.
---- There is the further problem that Grice found Hart would often commit. In fact, the man came to be infamously famous for his "Causality in the Law": only crimes need a cause!
--- The implicature of the March Hare, "why not?" keeps Alice, for a while, silent. Her silence meaning she does accept the implicature.
At this point it's a different persona. There's the "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells" type, there's the Dormouse type, the March Hare type.
The Dormouse is more friendly or cooperative, in ways:
"If these girls lived on treacle: they couldn't have done just that: they would have been ILL!". "So they were, VERY ill", the Dormouse continues. He ACCOMMODATES to Alice. The March Hare is being epagogic, rather than diagogic. "Why not, dear?". At this point Alice should have answered, i.e. not taking the 'why not?' as rhetorical. But she knew that any answer would have been just as arbitrary as the scenario in the Dormouse thing which was meant as just an entertaining thing to have over tea.
Or something
"Why not! Why, why not! It seems ridiculous that they were drawing EVERYTHING, to start with, that begins with an M. But I expect this stupid dormouse is being hyperbolic, and means, many. But his choice of "M" irritates me. He thinks I'm stupid? He has stupid little girls feeding on just treacle, being ill and knowing it, and now restricting their artistic inclinations to something that has nothing to do with anything?"
Imagine things beginning with M that Elsie, Dacie and Trillie could draw:
Mat
Mother (how do you draw a mother?)
Magpie
Mist (how do you draw mist)
Melon
Marmaduke
Misery
Mummy
Mephistopheles
Merde (or is this English only?)
---- etc.
Why not, indeed.
----
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The scenario is thus:
ReplyDeleteElsie, Lacie, and Tillie drew everything beginning with an M.
Why?
Why not?
Just because (+> "I don't know")
Because (+> Why not? on occasion.
We covered elsewhere the continuum of quantity - one, few, some, many, most, all ... There is also a continuum of interpersonal relation, ranging from words of love to fighting words. I would grade Why not? as less friendly than Just because, but not as unfriendly as Because. That's because Why not? implies that the interrogator is entitled to ask questions, but has made a bad assumption about where the burden of justification lies. Why not? attacks the sin, not the sinner.
The order, then, so far:
Just because (Good question, sorry I have no answer.)
"Why not" (You have every right to inquire into my thinking, but you are mistaken to believe that the choice must have a reason.)
Because (Remember your station.)
Fuck off! (Fuck off!)
The most intense response is the most explicit. We don't want to trust provocation to implicature. Indeed, by allowing implicature to do the interpersonal work in the other locutions, I think we implicate metalinguistically that we don't want to get all pissy over the thing.
I agree. That's why I think M. Bailey simplifies things when, well, she is a doctoral candidate in Engl.Lit and she got the right (she pays for those things?) to get her thing in The NYT and she says Alice is all about algebra.
ReplyDeleteI would think it's all about Implicature. Because:
-- Alice is a literalist. Or rather the critters she encounters are. Alice is a 'conventionalist'. She is imbued with the conventions of the English she knew as Little Miss Hargreaves, but she can't have a logic tutor (not just mathematics, as Bailey surmises) to let her go like that.
But on occasion Alice is not so dumb as she sounds. So perhaps she meant the question sincerely as I hope she would. In which case, "Fuck off" seems uninvited, in that I would restrict that to a scenario where I detect some ill-will on Alice's part.
So we may want to be pissy and consider (or prissy) Alice's implicature in
"Why?"
Recall:
`and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with an M--' `Why with an M?' said Alice. .
I think she had interrupted the Dormouse already, but his reply did please Alice, "they WERE ill". So Alice, the child that she is, is possibly looking for another similarly pleasing reply -- after all the tale is supposed to be entertaining.
At the end of the t-party she is feeling slighly excluded or starts to get bored by the implicaturalists, and leaves off. But one can imagine the Dormouse NOT being interrupted by the March Hare. -- For Bailey, the Dormouse is a burden to both the hare and the hatter, because, with Time, they form the eternal quaternion).
"Why with an M?"
"Well, you see, it's a 'M---ee-steree,' and sure you'll agree that if there's an M in mystery there is mystery in M"
"But that doesn't answer my question."
"What question?"
"Why? Are you saying it's just MYSTERIOUS to you, too?"
-----
The best answer, of course, the Dormouse should have given is Corey's:
ReplyDeletehttp://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/03/jerry-mahlman-goes-upside-heads-of.html
"Why with an M?"
Dormouse (had he been as clever as good Corey):
"That's a diffficult question, so to make it easier I'll divide it into two parts. First: Why?"
"Why is a question of incredible depth and subtlety, one that has engaged and frustrated the great philosophers from Socrates up through the modern age. To even attempt to answer would be to insult this great and brilliant tradition by suggesting that someone like myself deserves to be among their august company even for the briefest moment."
"Now, as for the second part of your question."
"With an M? Yes."