By Roger Bishop Jones for the Grice Club
To say "A and then B" is sometimes natural but sometimes prolix.
Of course one need not put "then" in if it is obvious that a temporal sequence is intended.
The omission of "then" may therefore be an elision, and in that case "then" is part of the meaning.
On the other hand, we are mostly here considering this to be an example of implicature.
What is asserted is a plain conjunction, but a temporal sequence is implicated.
The information conveyed would be the same whichever analysis is accepted, but there is a substantive difference in what the analyses say is the meaning of the sentence.
How do we tell which one is correct?
How does Grice argue (if he does) in favour of implicature rather than elision?
RBJ
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I think the elision view was put forward by L. J. Cohen, but I would have to revise the literature. He published "Grice on the logical particles of natural language", in a volume ed. by Bar-Hillel. This was responded by Walker in "Conversational Implicature" in a collection edited by Blackburn. Cohen counterattacked with an essay in "Philosophical Studies," -- 'Can the conversationalist hypothesis be defended?' --. Most of this has been reprinted in his collection on "Language and Knowledge" for Reidel. From what I recall, he opposes the 'conversationalist hypothesis' to the 'semantic hypothesis' -- and would explicitly argue that 'and' means 'and then' which is elided on occasion. I think he talks of 'semantic features' (or even senses) being dropped on occasion. I think his other example is 'plastic flower', which is not a flower. So that when we say 'plastic flower' we drop the 'sense' 'flower'. I should revise the point and find something online about it. I do not think there is a way to decide for one over the other. There are methodological considerations, rather, such as Modified Occam's razor. The issue of 'cancellability', which is crucial for the implicature-view is dealt with in the semantic-dropping view in other terms, so I should have to revise that. Thanks for the input.
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