Re: RT list: Procedural meaning of 'so' and 'so that' - questions

Dear Goh Lan Fun,

Goh Lan Fun wrote:
> ...
>
> My question is in order to construe the second proposition as the
> conclusion derived from the first proposition, is the hearer required to
> provide a contextual assumption in order to do so?
>
> I am sharing one example used in my thesis.
>
> The pronoun ‘us’ used in sentence (21) refers to the Department of
> Occupational Safety and Health.
> (21)
> It is not mandatory for private hospitals to register with us *so* it
> is difficult to say how many are operating without a license.
> (New Straits Times, 13 September 2006)
> ...
> My problem is I am not quite sure whether the hearer is expected to
> provide the contextual assumption or in fact the function of ‘so’ is to
> constrain the relevance of the two propositions which means the hearer
> can complete the argument without providing the contextual assumption.

Of course the hearer *must* provide the contextual assumption, otherwise
he won't be able see the relevance of the utterance with `so'. The
procedural information encoded in `so' helps the hearer to select the
context. Blakemore's point is that by constraining the type of cognitive
effect, the particle indirectly constrains the addressee's context
selection process.

In fact, the contextual assumptions needed to establish the relevance of
the `so' utterance are often themselves derived from conclusions of
other inferences. The hearer must indeed supply these in order to
establish relevance.

> Another question is does ‘so’ have the same function when it is used
> in conjoined utterances like sentence (21) and when it is used in two
> separate sentences like sentence (30) below?
> (30) The sad thing is we are complaining about fewer books being sold
> and read today. Books are getting too boring for children. *So* how do
> we get them to read again?

Interesting question. I don't think that there is a difference in
procedural encoding, but there is a difference in prosodic features
(pause length, intonation) that may affect so-called wide-scope or
narrow-scope interpretation of the particle. But it seems to me that
these effects are observed more with paragraph breaks (that is, longer
pauses in the speech or graphical layout in print) than simply with
sentence breaks. I have written about this in the following article:

Unger, C. 1996: `The scope of discourse connectives: implications for
discourse organization.' Journal of Linguistics 32:403-438.

It may be interesting to see whether sentence punctation can have
similar effects.

>
> How about the procedural meaning of ‘so that’ in sentences (31)and
> (32) below? Does the discourse connective ‘so that’ have the same
> function as ‘so’?

No. The `so' in `so that' has nothing to do with the `so' for which
Blakemore provided the analysis you mention. Rather, the `so' in `so
that' in the examples below is almost like a deictic element, a
placeholder, that may be paraphrased with `for the purpose that'. This
seems to indicate that `so that' encodes conceptual rather than
procedural information.

>
> (31) All I hope for is that the government will one day enforce the
> build-then-sell system *so that* future house buyers will not suffer.
> (New Straits Times, 11 September 2006)
>
> (32) He also said that PTPTN plans to set up a kiosk at KL Sentral *so
> that* graduates can go there to make payments for their loans instead of
> going to their headquarters in Wisma Chase Perdana.
> (New Straits Times, 25 November 2006)
>
> ...

Best regards,
Christoph

-- 
Dr. Christoph Unger
SIL International <www.sil.org>
Alleestr. 7
67308 Albisheim
Germany
Tel.: 06355-989939