RT list: Fwd: On the conceptual-procedural distinction

A forwarded message from Dan Sperber:

>
> Minh Dang is raising an interesting issue. Without discussing
> Minh's particular examples and arguments -- they are worth
> discussing but I have so much to do these days that I shouldn't
> even read these messages, let alone participate in this discussion
> --, let me make the following points:
>
> 1 - The idea that all linguistic expressions are 'procedural' can
> be traced back to the work, in the 1960s and 70s, of the French
> pragmatist Oswald Ducrot for whom the meaning of any expression
> (words as well as phrases and sentences) can be seen as a set of
> instructions for constructing, on the basis of contextual factors,
> the interpretation of an utterance where this expression occurs.
>
> 2 - With the development in the past ten years or so, of new ideas
> about lexical pragmatics within RT, it would not be inconsistent
> for us to acccept Ducrot's idea or at least adapt it in the
> following manner: All lexical items encode procedural content. Some
> (in fact the majority of them) also encode conceptual content. When
> a conceptual content is encoded, so is ipso facto the instruction
> to inferentially construct an ad hoc conceptual content taking the
> encoded conceptual content as a starting point of the inferential
> process. Other instructions more classically described in RT as
> procedural (starting with the work of Diane Blakemore) may be
> encoded by any word, whether it also encodes conceptual content or
> not.
>
> 3 - So we would have all words encoding procedural content, some
> words encoding only procedural content (e.g. 'however') and others
> encoding both procedural and conceptual content, and, among words
> encoding both procedural and conceptual content, words whose
> procedural content would just be the instruction to use the encoded
> conceptual content to construct an ad hoc conceptual content (e.g.
> 'giraffe'), and words encoding also procedural content other than
> the instruction to use the encoded conceptual content to construct
> an ad hoc conceptual content (e.g. 'unless').
>
> I am not actually defending the revision I have just outlined and I
> don't have a clear view of its merits, but it is an idea worth
> thinking about, as Minh Dang is encouraging us to do.
>
> Cheers, Dan
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----Message d'origine----
> Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 07:06:06 -0800 (PST)
> De: Minh Dang
> Sujet: Re: RT list: On the conceptual-procedural distinction (more
> from Minh)
> A: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
>
>
> Consider the linguistic form so in (1), (2), (3) below.
>
> (1) The light is on, so he must be in.
> (2) The light is on, so let’s go in.
> (3) The light is on, so is the radiator.
>
> It’s generally agreed that the contribution or constraint made/
> imposed by so in (1) is different from that in (2). In (1) it
> signals or points the hearer to the logical conclusion
> interpretation, whereas in (2) it signals or points the hearer to
> the causal interpretation. It’s also obvious that the contribution
> of so in (3), be it conceptual or procedural, is different from
> those in (1) and (2). Yet, it is one and the same linguistic form
> so (es-ou; /sou/). The best thing we can say is that the linguistic
> form so encodes at least two procedures, and perhaps conceptual
> information as well. One may argue that these are three different
> uses of so or that these are three homophonous words. However, if
> one appreciates that they are different uses of one and the same
> linguistic form so, it means one accepts that the linguistic form
> so is multiuse, or multiprocedural. If one says that they are
> homophonous words, it is necessary to clarify what you mean by
> ‘word’ and how it is different from a linguistic form. Now if we
> concede that encoded in the linguistic form so are at least two
> procedures, what are the consequences? Recall that in RT it is
> claimed that soguides or constrains the hearer’s interpretation or
> narrows the interpretive hypotheses. How can so do this guiding job
> if is is procedurally ambiguous, encoding completely different
> instructions? It simply can’t. To consolidate the argument, let us
> drop the second clause in each so that we have (4), (5), and (6)
> which are identical.
>
> (4) The light is on, so....
> (5) The light is on, so....
> (6) The light is on, so....
>
> Now it has become clear that the hearer is standing at the
> crossroads. On having heard or read so, there are three
> interpretive paths open to him, and he does not know which one he
> should follow even though he is relevance-theoretically claimed to
> have so to guide or instruct him. And he will probably not know
> which path to follow until he has read or heard the part that has
> been dropped. In other words, if the hearer does not know what
> follows he just can’t fix the meaning of so. That means that the
> meaning or procedure of so is not recovered or fixed until the
> hearer has finished processing the second segment. But this is in
> direct contradiction with the claim that so guides the
> interpretation of the second segment.
>
> Any comments would be helpful.
> Minh
>
> Minh Dang <minhducdang@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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 Mon Dec 3 10:38:42 2007