Grice on English as she is spoke

---- with caveats.

This is Grice, "Actions and Events". I won't quote his specific sentences, so that not to turn the attention from the general to the specific. I would like you to focus on the general, first:

Consider any sentence, or alleged sentence.

He wonders of we are to say that it is

"formally or strictly correct AS JUDGED BY THE OFFICIAL
STANDARDS OF GRAMMAR"? --

as emanating from, in this modern world of ours, M. I. T.!

-----

On the other hand, we may wonder about an 'alleged' 's'

which is

"NOT formally and strictly in conformity with
official standards of grammarians"

----

Note he is focusing on CHOMSKY now, qua grammarian!

----

YET,

"s" may happen to be

'INTELLIGIBLE'

and 'INFORMALLY admissible'.

-----



NOW FOR THE EXAMPLES.

He is into 'tacit'/explicit. Or 'covert' and 'explicit'. With special reference to the antecedent of a pronoun. So, his topic is ANAPHORA.

"It might WELL be that for a grammatically
strictly correct anaphoric reference to be
made, a PRIOR *explicit* is required; a
_covert_ reference will be insufficient."

----

Grice's pragmatist view of 'uptake' (cfr. Schiffer's pains with "language understanding"):

"However, IF the demand is _not_ for impeccable
grammar but for intelligibility, ... a covert
reference is not needed"

We can generalise this. In AAVE, African American Vernacular English, I read, you can delete copulas like _that_. In fact, not far from Grice's country (Oakland) they were having a case of instituting AAVE ('ebonic') as a way to have 'intelligible' (read: 'meaningful') stuff available to all those concerned.

Grice goes on:

He wants to say that his theory of the implicit will account for the fact.

"What IS needed is that the identification of the object of reference should rely on PRIOR discourse, not necessarily on prior [explicit] reference."


----

Now for his four examples, in reverse order:

"Smith's leg was cancerous; he contracted it in Africa".

---- Not the leg, presumably.



Second example:



"Smith's views on the immortality of the soul
filled many pages in _Mind_ but it was the
Oxford University Press which in the end published
it."

-----

Published Smith's soul?

---



Third example:


--

"A car went whizzing by me and scraped my fender; but _he_ didn't stop."

---

Note that in Italian, with "auto" or "automobile", there is no need to refer to the driver at all. It is the car that didn't stop.

----

----

His final example:

"I spent last summer in Persia; they are very dissatisfied
with the present regime."

---- B: You mean, the locals?

--- A: Darling! Who do you think I am mixing with them? The Brit expatriates of course. Lovely ambience, the club, must say, though.

Etc.

---