--- by JLS
------ for the GC
--- THIS I MEANT TO TITLE, "Kramer on natural English", but I did some searches in Google to no avail. ""Natural English" Grice" only gives some boring hits (Woods on "Lunar rocks in Natural English") etc.
O. T. O. H., Grice was using every other 6 words or so, "ordinary language" in his recollections.
I sometimes (i.e. two days ago) wondered what would have happened with Grice had he stayed in England. England can be a stuffy place to be, and I know of NO ENGLISH philosopher (or know NO English philosopher) of Grice's generation, or later, that ever achieved the panache that he did acquire. The way, as Chapman writes, he distanced, with affection, of Austin and the Oxford of the hayday of ordinary language (or linguistic) philosophy is moving.
Here we have Grice reminiscing (notably for the American Philosophical Association) and safely across the Pond, of things that -- the English being what they are -- would find slightly 'disrespectful', or 'out of order'. Plus, where? I mean, as a member of the Varsity, it would have been hateful if Grice kept disparaging Austin like that ("the Austinian Code", "The playgroup", "The Establishment", "the stone walls, not the redbricks", "Witters", etc.) -- Such style would have been UNTHINKABLE for the Grice of "The Causal Theory of Perception".
But Grice found America liberating. For Oxford was "mediaeval" to most Americans, and Austin was well dead. So Grice could expand on what he saw as "The Crucial Years": Oxford 1946-1967.
-----
"Natual English", Kramer writes, and compares it to "Francais naturel", "Italiano naturale", "Espanol natural", and so on and so forth. Of course 'natural' is metaphorical --. By 'natural English', Kramer means things HE would say. And things he would NOT say are not.
Intuitions play a crucial role in both philosophers and other humans. Were would we be without them? LINGUISTIC intuitions are a special type of intuitions. Women are said to be intuitive (unlike males) -- but personally, I don't think they (females) are especially good at LINGUISTIC intuitions. (I never found one that was).
----
When it comes to LINGUISTIC intuitions we have to distinguish:
*
**
?
??
?!
and others.
----
The asterisk means 'ungrammatical'. Thus we would NOT mark with an asterisk Chomsky's infamous claim to God-knows-what, "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously".
Then we have Carnap
"Caesar and the"
which we'd mark as "*". But as Grice notes, 'who cares?'. We are basically interested in philosophical truths, which are expressible in propositions, and thus 'sentences': and 'sentence' is, like 'reasoning', Grice writes, a value-oriented term: a sentence is per se a 'good sentence': "Caesar and the" is NOT a sentence, so marking it * is just like calling something that is NOT a well-formed formula a formula.
---- (But if a non-well-formed formula is not a formula, why bother to qualify the formula as 'well-formed'?)
---
This leaves us with "?" which is the sign many linguists (who else would care?) use to mark, 'pragmatically odd'. E.g
? "It is raining but I don't believe it".
Many linguists use, also, "??", to indicate, "pragmatically very odd", or "most odd, pragmatically"
as
"The Lone Ranger ran away and jumped on his horse, but I don't want to suggest in that order", or some such.
"I have three cars, indeed four, and then two -- but I don't mean to imply I'm being maximally informative or orderly".
Etc.
----
So this leads us to point at the peculiarity of what Kramer calls "natural English".
When Austin and his group talked of 'ordinary language' they didn't really know what they were talking about. Cicero too talked of 'ordinary language'. I was reading the Loeb Classical Library (the ENGLISh page, unfortunately) and came across this fine expression:
EXTRAORDINARY LANGUAGE
----
But I can't remember what the Latin for it was!
---
Galen, I was reading recently in a Philosophical Papers -- survey, thought that philosophers never really spoke "ordinary language".
I wrote to S. Clark about it -- he manages CHORA -- and he distributed my post. I said that Galen was some ignorant person, most likely. Still, I will see if I can retrieve his quote because it was kind of cute. The online link would then be "What philosophers believe" and it's a survey conducated by Chalmers as to why philosophers' talk have received a few criticisms since the time of Galen.
Of course Kramer is not saying that GRICE speaks non-natural English. Although on occasons he pities (rightly) the man for being an 'analogical' mind in a digital world, or actually the other way round: a digital mind in an analogical world.
Natural English is apparently 'analogical' for Kramer. It is, also, contextual, polysemous (in his view) and 'efficient'. Logiclish, on the other hand, is some monstrosity deviced by Zermelo and Company (he says). I would agree most of the time with Kramer there!
I still think that philosophers ARE concerned, in an interesting way, with "ordinary language". Of course nobody speaks it anymore (in Oxford). You attend a few seminars in Philosophy and as J. Kennedy observes, 'if you don't talk the talk, you cannot walk the walk'. Dennis Dutton has it right: the students are brainwashed into learning a jargon. Professors with tenure will teach the same courses for YEARS, and they will have garnered successions of students who, like zombies, cannot articulate their own thoughts for fear that the gigglers they will have for mates in the classroom will giggle at them. But few giggle at the professor -- in HER or HIS face. It IS sad -- but then...
And then you leave the clasroom and have a coffe in Starbucks while you browse the newspaper. And again: "Gobbledegook" this time by the journalists. Journalists, especially in the literary supplements, or even in the movie capsules, seem to have tried to 'escape' from "natural" ordinary language. They are all trying hard to be 'witty'.
----- Tired, you go to bed, and your malignant demon asks you, "Is that your conventional implicature?"
Etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Thus we would NOT mark with an asterisk Chomsky's infamous claim to God-knows-what, "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously".
ReplyDeleteHow do we know it's a claim? The reason we cannot mark it ungrammatical is that we do not know in what language, if any, it is written. It may, in fact, be ungrammatical.
(But if a non-well-formed formula is not a formula, why bother to qualify the formula as 'well-formed'?)
What else would you call Chomsky's thing if your point is that it looks like a sentence? A "sentence-shaped character string"? Why waste the syllables? We could, of course, make up a word. How about "Sentoid"? I guess we could call that a word of inart. There just doesn't seem to have been enough of a need, and words are not added to the lexicon lightly; the effort saved by having them must justify the effort to learn them.
Of course Kramer is not saying that GRICE speaks non-natural English.
I am saying that in some settings, Grice's words are technical rather than ordinary. His technical writings are written in technical language, so that is the language I hear him speak in what he writes that I read. If I ask you whether Parsifal is an example of gesamtkunstwerk, am I speaking what I call Natural English? I believe that I am, because speakers of that language incorporate foreign words where they have not developed their own word. But in that question, the German word has its German meaning because it is (polysemously) a word of art, and Natural English speakers use and interpret such words as they are used an interpreted in the appropriate art. Likewise, it's perfectly fine for HPG, or JLS, to slip a word or two of Logiclandian English into their Natural English utterances, where context demands. The two logical languages are so similar that A may not know at any given time whether U is uttering in one or the other, or whether any particular word is being used conventionally or imported from English-L into an English-N sentence.
I use "Natural English" because I want to suggest the genesis of the thing. It is not an abstraction from behavior; it is behavior. The formalization - "correct" grammar - was obtained descriptively an regurgitated proscriptively: "In Rome, they say 'Buon giorno,' so when in Rome, say 'Buon giorno.'" Thus, my first reaction to any irregularity, such as "well-know lesbian," is that the rules don't govern: the rules merely describe, and this particular naturally arising usage doesn't fit a rule, so get over it.
Natural English is apparently 'analogical' for Kramer. It is, also, contextual, polysemous (in his view) and 'efficient'.
That's very close. I would say that Natural English is, above all, evolutionarily adaptive, which forces it to be effcient, which entails its being analogical, contextual, and polysemous. It is smooth like the stones in the brook, not like a well-turned bowl.
Tired, you go to bed, and your malignant demon asks you, "Is that your conventional implicature?"
Or are you just glad to see me?
BTW, I found this paragraph in Wiki wonderfully chilling:
Wagner was an extremely prolific writer.... Essays of note include ... Das Judentum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music", 1850), a polemic directed against Jewish composers in general, and Giacomo Meyerbeer in particular.... In his later years Wagner became a vociferous opponent of experimentation on animals and in 1879 he published an open letter, 'Against Vivisection', in support of the animal rights activist Ernst von Weber.
Apparently, Dr. Mengele didn't get the memo.
Oddly, I'm meeting with my opera club today -- in a couple of hours -- for a study (it was advertised in the vernacular newspaper -- in the English-speaking vernacular newspaper, as it happens -- my name featured) to study a production currently on stage -- for this week and next -- of Beethoven's "Fidelio" -- and there's NO history of Italian opera that that DOES mention that the BEST 'Fidelio' EVER written is by Giacomo Meyerbeer! (the second-best is PAER's -- and ONLY THIRD comes Beethoven -- ah well. We think Beethoven's Fidelio IS in Italian, too -- and that "In des Lebens fruelingstagen" is best rendered, and sung, as "della vita la primavera" (RAI version).
ReplyDeleteOddly, Grice said that "Meistersinger" was 'for children'. Richardson reported this in his obituary for Grice -- in the St. John's College Records -- I typed it and shared. I think he was right: Meistersinger IS for children -- and some of their MOTHERS.
---- (It's illegal to send children to the opera on their own).
Thanks for comments on 'natural English'. Very witty. I will get over "it", I hope. "It" being 'the well-lesbian known that Butler was"
-- and is, for that matter.
----
In the Jevons just sent (you don't HAVE to read the bore), Jevons uses 'imply' and 'mean'. I would grant they are 'natural English' TILL Grice. Perhaps we may need, on occasion, "Griceish" (he would have hated that --). On the whole, his usage is, as Kramer notes, pretty natural. Except, of course, as Kramer also points out, when it isn't.
Yes, Gesamtkunstwerk is possibly not too natural -- qua piece of English. Still, I am saddened by the Germans who use that -- and Gedanke Experimente, and so many lovely things -- Weltanshauung -- totally unable to 'implicate' how clever they are by using them -- they are just TOO natural naturalisms for them --. In a recent meeting of my opera club I advertised "Caro imago senza eguale" as being from Mozart's Singspiele which was a good ironic touch to implicate that while I was ready to advertise the thing as featuring a good Italian-language aria, "Il flauto magico" is NOT really an opera. Or not. Etc. Will elaborate Kramer's more detailed points at a later date, I hope -- as opposed to "an earlier date", which I Kant.
[I] Will elaborate Kramer's more detailed points at a later date, I hope -- as opposed to "an earlier date"....
ReplyDeleteWhy not "as opposed to 'a not-later date'"? Because elaborating at "an earlier date" would be impossible, "at a later date" has to mean "after today," and if that's what it means, it is informative and not to be cast off so discourteously.
Sometimes, knowing some English-L comes in handy.
??
ReplyDeleteHow can it JUST mean 'after today'? even in your 'natural' version of 'things'? I can't see how the silliness of the phrase (cfr. 'rules and regulations') can be made to work. "I will elaborate, I hope" seems to be all that is needed. The 'will' indicates the futurity, already. If I express the hope that I will elaborate (for surely people die, and there are accidents -- Imagine being in Rio and disappearing from the surface of the earth like that -- 'a foretold tragedy', the Minister of Welfare reported -- I think he has been reading "Othello" --).
So I was just thinking that:
t1 < t0
to = to
t2 > t0
where "T-o" is time of utterance.
So we have, T-o, being 'THE date', THIS date.
We have, an earlier date, i.e. for any t1 earlier than T-o.
And then we have, a later date, for t2 > t0.
While the correct, strict, as you say, contradictory negation of 'at a later date' IS 'at a non-later date', I cannot see how (assuming that I cannot do TWO THINGS at the same time, which IS the case with me -- Most of the times, I cannot even do ONE thing at a time, if you believe me) 'at a non-later date' can mean anything DIFFERENT FROM (or 'then', as my friend Jack prefers) 'at an earlier date'?
Rules and regulations is that old Anglo/Norman thing so that inhabitants of England of both varieties would understand the locution.
ReplyDeleteA "date" (as used in the phrase "at a later date") is not a "time"; it is an entire calendar day.
Because nothing can be done "now" except what I am actually doing, "I will do that now" cannot be true, unless "now" is understood to mean "immediately," which is, indeed, what it is used to mean in that locution. Thus, "I will do that now," means, in Natural English, "I will do that immediately." "I will do that at a later time" means "I will do that, but not immediatlety." "I will do that at a later date" means "I will do that, but not today."
Thanks for the correction. Sorry about that. I misused 'date'. I thought it meant just 'time' -- It's odd. I suppose you can only have a date a date?
ReplyDelete