Re: RT list: On the conceptual-procedural distinction (again)

Dear all,
   
  Just a further question on the issue.
   
  How is it possible for a linguistic expression or just anything perform the guiding or constraining work in communication if it is conceptually empty?
   
  Minh

Minh Dang <minhducdang@yahoo.com> wrote:
      Dear all,
  

  I am looking into the conceptual-procedural distinction, and I would be grateful if you could share with me your opinions on the following.
  

  1) As far as I know, the standard RT position on personal subjective pronouns such as I, he is that they are procedural though I have known of no one specifying exactly what procedural information is encoded in each. I would imagine the procedure encoded in he is something like this: look for a male person, but I have problem with I. Is it: look for the speaker/utterer or else? I also have problem with the it in It’s great to hear from you.
  

  In addition, what is the RT position on personal objective pronouns such as me, him? And what is the RT position on other pronouns such as one, someone, somebody, anyone, nobody, nothing?
  

  Also, what is the RT position on proper nouns such as Blair, Scotland, Amazon?
  

  2) I read in Blakemore (2006) that because is not procedural but conceptual. Now, if because encodes a concept, it should be amenable to semantic compositionality. The best examples I can think of are simply because, just because, partly because, but honestly I am not sure. Could someone clarify this for me please? I am also wondering what logical and encyclopaedic properties of because are, for these are defining properties of concepts according to Wilson (unpublished lecture 2002-3).
   
  In addition, I assume that the RT position on prepositions is that they are conceptual. But again, it seems to me they do not look susceptible to semantic complexity as suggested by Fraser (2006)
  

  3) It has been argued by Dor (2003) that ‘newspaper headlines are designed designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers: Headlines provide the readers with the optimal ratio between contextual effect and processing effort, and direct readers to construct the optimal context for interpretation.’ My understanding of the above quote from the abstract of the article is that newspaper headlines are in effect procedural. Now, if Dor is right, I would like to say two things. First, a quick look at newspaper headlines reveals that they are often loaded with conceptual expressions. For example, BECKS FACES CROATIA AXE; SICK NOTICE; NIGHT FOR PRIDE, TERRY READY TO ROAR... all taken from The Sun of 19 Nov 2007. Thus, I find it difficult to say that these headlines are not conceptual. Second, if it is true that newspaper headlines are procedural or relevance optimisers (I think it is true), it should be possible to argue along similar lines that the topic
 sentence in a passage, titles of books, subtitles, abstracts, summaries, tables of content, preface, illustration on the cover, paragraphing, chaptering, choice of conceptual words in an utterance, intonation, stress, formating (bold, italic, ..), pause, punctuation, silence, and so on, all serve the same function, i.e. optimising relevance or procedural. It looks like everything that is used is relevance optimisers/procedural! What do you think? For me, I think concepts and procedures are like two sides of one and the same coin: no coin has only one side, be it conceptual or procedural. When we talk about procedural meaning of an expression, it seems to me that we are not talking about its ‘per se’ meaning. Rather, it looks like we are talking about function(s) of the expression. Of course, I am assuming that function and meaning are two different things of one and the same thing – by the latter ‘thing’ I mean an expression or a linguistic form, or even more broadly
 anything that is used for commutative purpose.
  

  Thank you very much for reading. And thank you very much more for any comments you are going to have.
  

  Minh
   
  Quick Reference
  

  Blakemore, D. (2006). Meaning, Procedural and Conceptual. In Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, Elsevier.
   
  Dor, C. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol 5, Issue 5, pp 695-721.
   
  Bruce Fraser (2006) "On the conceptual-procedural distinction". Style. Spring-Summer 2006. FindArticles.com. 27 Nov. 2007. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_1-2_40/ai_n17113874
  

    
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Received on Fri Nov 30 10:45:04 2007