by JLS
for the GC
KRAMER in comment to "Martha fell":
"falling literally and falling figuratively are
different things to do. One of them survives removal
of its adverb, the other is defined by its adverb."
If there is one?
I for one am fascinated by the idiom,
"He fell for her"
Apparently, this has NOTHING to do with "fall in love". So we do have an 'adverb' or 'prepositional phrase' as Kramer calls it -- via "English" --. I would not be surprised if the Romans used 'for her' in a specific case, possibly the accusative, and thus skipping the preposition altogether.
I would think, that, literally, if he fell -- for her, in love, or just into a ditch or trance, or on his sword -- the addition is strictly, immaterial. Surely we better 'be as 'informative' as is required -- to abide by Quantitas, or Quantitaet, if you want to echo Kant on this! --. Therefore, one feels some sort of duty to specify the conditions surrounding his 'fall'.
Grice wrote on "Personal Identity" in 1941, and indeed, "I fell from the stairs" is one of his examples back then. He notes that "I" is replaceable by "my body" in that sentence without loss of 'sense'. Surely it would be odd to say, "My body fell from the stairs" but let that be. This is young Grice and his theory of implicature was yet in the 'offing' as they say?
So, it seems that it concerns substantials and substantive types. If we are talking of psychological phenomena, 'He fell' should be understood 'mentally', perhaps 'mnemonically' -- for Grice 1941, "I" reduces to 'mnemonic states'.
For, what IS to fall? Surely the original sense must indeed by "physical". It means a movement from a surface to a LOWER surface. How this connects with love must have some pagan explanation. Or other!
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Theologians in the club may want to ponder whether "Adam fell for Eve" implies "Adam fell."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Strictly, one may want to consider 'implies' vis a vis 'entails', too -- the coinage (sort of thing) by Moore.
ReplyDeleteI would think "Adam fell for Eve" does entail "Adam fell".
This seems to be LIKE conjunction reduction, but only different. As Grice notes, only logical formulae with explicit 'conjuncts', separated by '/\' (which is the ampersand that Grice uses in WoW:ii) allow for a tidy application of 'conjunction' reduction. But the conjunctional nature of "Adam fell for Even" is NOT clear. In Grice's manoevure, we would have one BASIC structure:
--- fell
and a derived structure:
--- fell for ---
And he IS wondering if it's OKAY to have them in a 'mixed' bag. I don't see why not. After all, I don't necessarily like an unmixed bag.
Perhaps "Adam fell", qua synopsis of "Adam fell for Eve" fails to attach any importance to "Eve". After all, if HE fell, it was BECAUSE of Eve. So she is the agentive here. SHE caused him to fall --. The doing was Adam, no doubt -- the fall -- but the maker was Eve.
Strictly, it was the devil, in the shape of the serpent -- and as part of the co-conjunctional analysis, the apple.
----- Then there's 'shoot' and 'kill' and 'cause to die' -- which we CANNOT apply to the Bible, since they didn't shoot in those days -- but you get my drift. These was I think studied by a couple linguists (I elide the 'of' intentionally, to provoke them -- and I mean 'two' by couple) back in the day of so-called Generative Semantics which has been studied alla Lakatos by Newmeyer.
Generative semanticists -- starting with Chomsky in 1966 FELL for Grice. But I was VERY surprised when I consulted the name index for Chomsky's 1966 book ("Aspects of the theory of syntax") to see Grice misquoted as "A. P. Grice" -- I almost fell in a trance when I read that.
But back to 'shooting' and 'killing' and 'causing to die'. THis relates to a point TOUCHED upon by Grice: guise or description of events alla Anscombe. Surely in terms of the ontology, the shooting, the killing, and the dying belong in the SAME category almost.
(With a caveat for 'shoot' though, since it's only nonomonotonically that when when we say, "He shot him" we mean "He shot him DEAD".
At one point, I was impressed by headliners: "Two sailors killed in a storm". It transpires they drowned -- nobody really KILLED them. But "dead in a storm" sounds unsensational. -- and in any case, the STORM was the causative-agentive, too.