Compositional semantics -- and Grice

This, for the record, then, Jones's post:

"I recently stumbled across a PhD by Russell Elliot Dale, in which he (en passant) traces some of Grice's ideas on meaning to a Lady Victoria Welby"

--- Indeed. As we have seen, she was a good one for coinages, perhaps like Grice. Grice with his 'implicature' which sounds mild compared to Welby's sensific (which she rejected) and signific -- which she didn't. Put the blame on Peirce who inspired her!

"In the manner of London buses I then notice that Russell mentions the same lady in his "Our Knowledge of the External World as a field of study for scientific philosophy" (in a not particularly flattering way)."

As I was saying Dale quotes from Russell's review of Ogden and Richards.

"So I thought I would (presumably unnecessarily) provoke the third by asking whether you (JL, or anyone else who cares to comment) have come across Dale's dissertation and what you think of that part of his thesis (or of the rest). He does, for my money, field what looks at first glance like a rather facile critique of formal semantics, but I don't suppose that need impact what he has to say about Grice."

-- Dale is well aware of some of the complications there. Schiffer, for example, had presented a bit of a compositional problem to Grice, which came out in Grandy/Warner, PGRICE. It contains the phrase, 'apostasy', as used by Schiffer himself (rhetorically). Apparently, Grice was supposed to be commenting on each of the pieces, but Grandy/Warner came out like that -- with just a brief editorial by Grandy/Warner on Schiffer's contribution. I'll re-read the relevant ch. 4 in Dale, then -- seeing your interest, and mine!

In 1987, Schiffer developed those issues -- but the "Compositional" paper in PGRICE became a chapter (with modifications) -- in "Remnants of Meaning". Schiffer has even later examined other bits of his 'apostasy', if that's what it was, in "Things we mean", which I'm always tempted to set to music as in:

Things we said last summer.

Things we meant last summer.

As we know, Grice said that he hadn't exactly been standing still. I love to provide oratio obliqua for telephonic remarks! This is meiosis -- rather than litotes. Grice's other example is:

"He was slighty intoxicated" of a man said to have broken all the furniture.

i. I haven't exactly been standing still.

meaning, by implication, that:

ii. As Aristotle said of Plato: Some like Plato, but Truth is my woman.

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In Latin, veritas is feminine. And the Aristotle quote comes in various versions. I like the one where he uses 'amica' (female friend). So Aristotle says that Plato is his friend, but Truth is also a 'friend'. Or something.

In Greek it was all perhaps more complicated, but then perhaps Aristotle never said that.

What I mean, of course, is that Schiffer's confession of an 'apostasy' (and his trusting that Grice would -- as he was -- be forebearing of it -- we can find classy historical sources for!

---- Next: What Dale does with Schiffer does with Grice -- compose that!