RT list: Some 'colourful' remarks on the procedures encoded in BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS.

Dear all,
   
  Regarding my last ‘thought-provoking email’ (as described by one of the respondents) I have received some valuable responses for which I would like to say ‘thank you’. One suggests that encoded in BUT is a number of procedures (contra Blakemore’s one single procedure). If that is true, then these procedures need to be specified. Another suggests that it is possible for these three connectives to encode different procedural information and yet lead to same or similar interpretations in some contexts but not in other. It follows from these responses that procedures are subject to pragmatically narrowing or enrichment and in so being it seems to me that procedures are in this aspect similar to concepts.
   
  Now, here’s my new piece if you care to read. Moderator, please shut me up if you think this is non-sense, or in relevance-theoretic terms, brings you no contextual effects in return for your scarce processing efforts!
   
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  Some 'colourful' remarks on the procedures encoded in BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS.
   
  Underlying assumption: In some cases the three are intersubstitutable, in others they are not.
   
  Of the three expressions (BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS), NEVERTHELESS is the least general, so let me call the procedural information encoded in it y. HOWEVER is more general than NEVERTHELESS, so let's further give it an r element. BUT is the most general, so let's even further give it a b element. Hence,
   
  BUT = (r, y, b) = most general/least restricted
  HOWEVER = (r, y) = less general/more restricted
  NEVERTHELESS = (y) = least general/most restricted
   
  i) When only BUT is acceptable as in (1-2), the procedure encoded in BUT must include the b-element (blue), which HOWEVER and NEVERTHELESS lack. It could be one of the following combinations, but whatever it is, it must have the b-element (blue).
   
  · r (red) + y (yellow) + b (blue) = brown
  · r (red) + b (blue) = purple
  · y (yellow) + b (blue) = green
  · b (blue) = blue
   
              (1) She is not my mother but my sister. (*however/*nevertheless)
   
              (2) A: We had a very nice dinner. I had an excellent lobster.
                          B: But what about the price? (*however/*nevertheless)
   
  ii) When BUT and HOWEVER are intersubstitutable (but not NEVERTHELESS) as in (3), the procedure in action must be the totality of r and/or y (red and yellow). The unacceptability of NEVERTHELESS in these cases can be accounted for by its lack of the r-element in its procedure. And the b-element is excluded/ is not activated from the procedural totality of BUT. In other words, the procedure encoded in BUT is narrowed down to that of HOWEVER. There are two combinations here.
   
  · r (red) = red
  · r (red) + y (yellow) = orange
              
              (3) C: Have you got my article?
                          D: Yes, but/however the last page is missing. (*nevertheless)
   
  iii) When BUT, HOWEVER, NEVERTHELESS are intersubstitutable as in (4), the procedure in action is y-element (yellow): all three share this element. In other words, in these cases, the (r-b) elements are excluded/are not activated from the procedural totality of BUT, the r-element is excluded/is not activated from the procedural totality of HOWEVER. In yet other words, the procedures encoded in BUT/HOWEVER are narrowed down to that of NEVERTHELESS. Only one combination is possible: yellow.
   
              (4) E: She has had a very difficult time this semester.
                          F: But/However/Nevertheless I think she should hand in some of the work.
   
  Now after i)-iii), I have seven colours/procedures for BUT! Brown, purple, green, blue, red, orange, and yellow!
   
  The conclusion from these remarks is that the procedural totality of BUT is not always wholly activated. Which element/aspect of this totality is actually activated is case-sensitive, varying from case to case. To use the analogy of colours above, BUT is multi-facet, multi-coloured, and which colour/combination of colours is activated is case-sensitive. That also means that BUT appears to be procedurally ambiguous. Now what constrains the choice of which aspect the procedural totality is activated? One obvious answer would be that the ‘man behind the curtain’ that is pulling the strings should be the context which is in turn constrained by the principle of relevance. It is said that the rationale of procedural meaning is to constrain the interpretation processes one of which is the selection of context, but as I have shown above procedural meaning itself also seems to be constrained in some way by something (context). So there seems to be some kind of
 inter-constraining/cross-constraining/mutual-constraining in action. But this reminds me of Sperber and Wilson’s analogy of dancers: one should lead and the other just follows. If both attempted to lead, it’d probably be more like wrestling than dancing!
  Thank you for reading and best regards
  Minh
   

 
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Received on Tue Dec 12 17:19:15 2006