Grice, "Reply to Anscombe"

Title:Anscombe Conjunction, Disjunction Truth-Conditions (in Basque)
Authors:Gómez Txurruka, Isabel
Source:Gogoa: Euskal Herriko Unibertsitateko Hizkuntza, Ezagutza, Komunikazio eta Ekintzari buruzko Aldizkaria, I(2), 261-291. 31 p. October 2001.
Document Type:Journal Article
Subjects:CONJUNCTION
DISJUNCTION
LANGUAGE
NATURAL
TRUTH CONDITION
Abstract:It is nowadays commonly accepted that the semantics of natural language conjunction and disjunction coincides with that of their logical counterparts: natural conjunction would indicate that both conjuncts are true, whereas natural disjunction would semantically signal that at least one disjunct is true. This view, born with the arising of first order logic, received strong theoretical support from Grice's proposal of a theory of implicatures and was formally developed in Gazdar (1979) and Kamp and Reyle (1993), among others. In this paper we first show that these standard logical interpretations of natural particles encounter severe problems and, in particular, are subject to counterexamples. Then, an alternative theory of the meaning of natural conjunction and disjunction, based on notions intimately related to discourse structure and discourse coherence along the lines of Asher (1993) and Lascarides and Asher (1993) is developed.