R. B. Jones, in "Distinguishing implicature and elision", this blog -- makes a genial point.
Oddly, 'elide' and 'elision' got their source in Latin.
Consider an unrelated point. Jones was concerned with what I rather see as 'disimplicature' (the dropping of entailments) and 'implicature' (the idea that '&' means 'and then' and that the 'then' is dropped on occasion at the risk of one's infringing the maxim, 'avoid unnecessary prolixity (sic)').
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But cfr. elision:
"S is P"
"S seems P"
--- Grice's example:
The pillar box seems red to me.
I would claim that that is an elision for
"The pillar box seems to be red to me".
Oddly, 'seems' ALWAYS can be expanded to 'seem to be':
"Ricky seems angry".
Unless you do say, "Ricky seems to be angry", which you can't (or kant) expand any further.
In some languages which lack 'to be', the elision is not present -- but then no language lacks 'to be'!
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In the "seems" case the question whether or not elision is taking place "seems" less significant than in the case of "and", because there does not appear to be a significant semantic difference between "seems" and "seems to be".
ReplyDeleteIn the "and" case, the meaning is different if one understands "and" as an elision of "and then" than otherwise, even if in the latter case one then takes a temporal element as implicated.
But the question remains, how can one, when the difference between the two interpretations is just down to whether a particular aspect of the content is said or implicated, decide which is the case?
Or do we accept that there are cases in which there is no answer, cases in which the boundary between what is said and what is implicated is indeterminate?
RBJ
No! Heavens no! Doublecheck when you have the time THAT page in "Logic and Conversation", in WoW -- ii on
ReplyDelete"He was caught in the grip of a vyse".
This has led many so-called 'post-Griceians' to differ! Grice is clear. He is using 'say' in a very "arbitrary" sense -- his own! And mine as it happens -- I learned English from Grice!
He wants to say that the denotatum of "he" in 'he was caught in the grip of a vice' -- acdtually in his next example, "Harold Wilson is a great man" -- is part of 'what is said'!
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Re: the elision thing, once I comment on your other posts, I should drop a blog post, since I was thinking about it. Or even before!