Grice's Ducks

Speranza

From today's World Wide Words:

 © Michael Quinion 2014 http://www.worldwidewords.org.

"A headline over a story from Reuters: "China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote." Philip Peluso sent that in and added, "Wisely, the chickens, turkeys and geese refused to be quoted.""

This relates to Grice's commentary on "&".

Strawson's example was:
"She married and had a child."

Strawson noted that there is an implicature here, in that, the logically equivalent:

"She had a child and married."

presupposes that the order of events is a different one.

Now, Reuters will, if possible, get away with '&'.

"China urges restraint in Ukraine AND ducks comment on Crimea vote."

Instead, they choose the ungrammatical (in Grice's and Strawson's view):

"China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote.

Now, since that is ungrammatical UPON ONE READING, one is forced to look for a reading that is GRAMMATICAL -- a Griceian maxim, alla "speak grammatically".

We arrive at the favoured interpretation:

"China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote. Wisely, the chickens, turkeys and geese refused to be quoted."

Or not.

It may be argued that

"China urges restraint in Ukraine"

and

"A flock of ducks comment on Crimea vote"

flouts one of Grice's maxims, in that the topic seems to change dramatically. But this implicature can ALWAYS be cancelled, whereas a grammatical mistake is a grammatical mistake is a grammatical mistake.