It suits Grice

Kramer speaks of 'lead' and 'lead'.

Grice speaks of 'suit' and 'soot'.

On p. 366 of "WoW":

"It would be unwise to neglect a further
direction of inquiry, namely proper
characterisation of the relation between
words on the one hand and on the other
the sounds or shapes which constitute
their physical realisations".

Exactly Kramer's distinction, elsewhere, between logical/physical devices.

Grice goes on:

"Such reflections may be expected to
throw light on the precise SENSE in which
words are insturments, and may well
be of interset both in themselves and as a
needed antidote to the facile acceptance
of such popular but dubiously well
founded hypothesis about langauge as
the alleged type-token distinction"

--- Blame Pierce on it!

---

Grice goes on:

"It is perhaps NATURAL to assume that

in the case of words

the fundamental ENTITIES"

--- alla Kramer on spacetime, as per the "Scientific American" he was reading --

"are PARTICULAR

shapes and sounds (word tokens)

and that words, in the sense

of word-types are probably

regarded as CLASSES or sets

of mutually resembling word tokens."

So far so good. Gonzalo Pereyra (an Oxonian) would be pleased that Grice is endorsing his favoured Wittersian family-resemblance theory of universalia.

Grice goes on:

"But I think taht such a view can be

seen to be in conflict with

COMMON SENSE (to whatever extent

that is a drawback)."


--- and here comes Grice's suit:

"John's rendering of the word 'soot'
may be INdistinguishable from
James's rendering of the word 'suit';


BUT:

it does NOT follow"


---- This is pace The Grice Club which J says is famous for its non-sequiturs.

"from this that

when they [John and James]

produce these renderings,

they are uttering

THE SAME WORD,

or producing different

TOKENS of the same word-type."

--- Why?

Well, he goes on:

"Indeed, there is something

tempting about the idea that,

in order to allow for all

admissible vagaries of rendering,

what are to count for a given person

as renderings of particular words

can only be determined by reference

to more or less extended segments

of his discourse;"

---- not yet abstract enough!

Grice goes on:

"and this in turn perhaps prompts the

idea that particular

AUDIBLE or visible

renderings of words are

ONLY ESTABLISHED as such

by being CONCEIVED"

in an abstract way, I'd add

"by the speaker or writer

as realisations of JUST those words.

One might say perhaps"

--- in a realist, not Occamist vein,

"that words come first and only later
come their realisations".

But one is not one!