Well, if the claim of Anscombre & Ducrot (1977) and Horn (1989) that ‘but’
in English is ambiguous is true, then this means that there are more than
one ‘but’ in English.
Given the ambiguity account of ‘but’, let’s assume that we have three
‘buts’ in English:
But 1= (‘lakinna’ in Standard Arabic) = DENIAL
But 2= contrast = (‘’innama’ in Standard Arabic) = CONTRAST
But 3= correction= (‘bal’ in Standard Arabic) = CORRECTION
Which are morphologically the same but slightly different in lexical
import. Now if the multi-procedural account of ‘but’ is right, then each
‘but’ will encode a procedure which is different from that encoded by the
other ‘but’ and by that, we will end up having three separate procedures:
But1:
Procedure= What follows bal denies and replaces an assumption communicate
(or manifest) in what precedes it.
But2:
Procedure= What follows bal c and contradicts an assumption communicate
(or manifest) in what precedes it.
But3:
Procedure= What follows bal corrects and replaces an assumption
communicate (or manifest) in what precedes it.
Now, regarding your question on how we ‘as hearers’ choose the relevant
independent procedure encode by ‘but’ and whether the procedure encoded by
‘but’ constrains the contextual effect or vice versa, my view is the
following:
I don’t think that the contextual information offers great help in
choosing the relevant procedure encoded by ‘but’, it is rather the other
way round. The lexical import of ‘but’ is what facilitates the choice of
the relevant cognitive effect.
I imagine that, assuming the RT has search machine like Google or Yahoo,
if we type the linguistic item ‘but’ in the search filed, we will get
cognitive effect and not vice versa, we will not get the linguist item
‘but’ as a result if we type the cognitive effect.
In some situations, we might have the three different reading of ‘but’ in
the same context.
Consider the following example:
(1) The gentleman is not the smiling quite person sitting at the table but
the frowned angry one quarrelling with the waiter.
But in the above sentence can have three different readings. Consider the
following scenario: John and his friend Peter are at the restaurant to
have their lunch. By accident David, John’s brother comes to the same
restaurant. John comes to David and asks him to join their table. David
asks John whether he is alone or accompanied by somebody. John tells David
that his friend the gentle man is having lunch with him. David looks at
the table and sees two persons around to the table and then says to him
“your friend must the smiling quite person sitting at the table” and John
replies uttering (1). In this scenario, but encodes a denial of
expectation meaning. John’s brother’s expectation (given in the first
conjunct) is that a gentleman has to be a smiling and quite person.
However, this expectation is denied by the second conjunct (the frowned
angry person quarrelling with the waiter). ‘But’ in the same scenario can
have a contrastive meaning as well. It encodes a contrastive relationship
between to prepositions ‘the smiling quite person sitting at the table’ as
given in the first conjunct and ‘the frowned angry person quarrelling with
the waiter’ as given in the second conjunct. ‘But’ in this very scenario
can receive a third reading namely ‘correction’. In this sense Johns, by
uttering (1) intends to correct his brother’s through about his friend.
Thus, in (1) the second conjunct (frowned angry person quarrelling with
the waiter) provides a correct replacement to the second conjunct (the
smiling quite person sitting at the table).
Jokingly, I guess that the best way to determine the relevant procedure
encoded by but is to have three different linguistic items which mean but
in English. Other languages do have this.
Best,
Miri
> Miri,
>
> Thanks for your contribution. Again, my question is: how does the hearer
> select the relevant procedure from all the independent procedures said to
> be encoded in the linguistic item but? An answer would be consideration of
> contexual information available. But but is claimed to specify 'certain
> properties of context', isn't it? So is it the case that context
> information helps to determine which of the procedures of but is in
> opertation or that the procedure encoded in but determines or guides the
> hearer in the selection/construction of context?
>
>
> Minh
>
> Miri Hussein <M'i.Hussein@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: I agree with you, Minh,
> that the denial, contrast and correction’ but’ do
> not encode the same procedure. There is actually a (slight) difference
> between the three meanings encoded by ‘but’. That is why ‘but’ is
> translated to different words in some languages as is previously claimed
> by Anscombre and Ducrot (1977) and Horn (1989.
>
> For instance, in Standard Arabic there are three different corresponding
> lexical items to ‘but’:
>
> a) Lakinna (the denial but)
>
> ‘He is rich lakinna-hu stingy’
>
>
> b) ’Innama (the contrast but)
>
> ‘John is rich ’innama Peter is poor’
>
> c) Bal (the correction but)
>
> He is not rich bal poor
>
>
> These three lexical items which are all translations of ‘but’ in English
> are not replaceable. I think that the relevance theoretic uni-procedural
> analysis of ‘but’ proposed by Blakemore (1987, 2002) and Iten (2005)
> cannot account for these three different meanings in the same way, i.e.
> ‘but’ in the tree uses does not encoded one and the same procedure, as you
> speculate.
>
>
> An alternative account could be that ‘but’ is a multi-procedural
> linguistic expression. It encodes different procedures and thus puts
> separate (though related) constraints on the inferential part of the
> interpretation of the utterance in which it occurs. I don’t have a clear
> idea so far how this could be done, but it could be something like:
>
>
>
> In stead of having one general (unified) procedure of ‘but’ as in (1):
>
> (1) What follows (Q) contradicts and eliminates an assumption that
> is manifest
> in the context.
>
>
> We can have three different (though related) procedures:
>
> In the case of denial, the procedure could be that:
>
> ‘The following clause is relevant as a denial and replacement of an
> assumption communicated (or manifest) in the preceding clause’
>
> (NB the following clause = the clause that follows but & preceding clause
> = the clause the precedes but)
>
> In the case of contrast, it could be:
>
> ‘The following clause is relevant as contradiction and replacement of an
> assumption communicated (or manifest) the preceding clause’
>
> In the third case, the procedure could be:
>
> ‘The following clause is relevant as correction and replacement of an
> assumption communicated (or manifest) the preceding clause’
>
>
> It seems to be that these three procedures are related in the sense the
> content of the but-clause in the three cases replaces the assumption
> communicated in the preceding clause. However, these procedures are
> different due to the differences between three linguistically encoded
> meanings of ‘but’ namely ‘denying’, ‘contradicting’ and correcting’
>
> To deny something does not really mean to contradict or correct it, or to
> contradict something, you don’t have to correct it, etc.
>
>
>
>> It is well-known that several languages have separate words for
>> denial/contrast but and for correction but [nhung and mà in Vietnamese,
>> aber and sondern in German, pero and sino in Spanish, and Swedish,
>> Finnish, and Hebrew as reported in Iten (2005: 123 book)]. Fraser (2006)
>> also reports a similar observation with Arabic, Catalan, Danish,
>> Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Korean, Sinhala, Spanish, and
>> Vietnamese. Let me take Vietnamese as a case study.
>>
>>
>> B = but; N = nhung; M = mà
>>
>>
>>
>> 1. It is true that denial B is/must be translated in Vietnamese as N.
>>
>> (a)
>> - He’s rich but very stingy.
>> - Ông ta giàu nhung rất bủn xỉn.
>>
>> 2. It follows from (1) that encoded in denial B and N is one and the
>> same procedure. Otherwise it would be a bad/unacceptable or even
>> impossible translation.
>>
>>
>> 3. It’s true that correction B is/must be translated into Vietnamese
>> as
>> M (not N).
>>
>> (b)
>> - John is not my father but my uncle.
>> - John không phải là bố tôi mà là chú tôi.
>>
>> 4. It follows from (3) that encoded in correction B and M is one and
>> the
>> same procedure. Otherwise the translation would be bad or unacceptable
>> or even impossible.
>>
>>
>> 5. It is true that RT claims that denial B and correction B encode one
>> and the same procedure, that RT does not distinguish between the two.
>>
>>
>> 6. It follows from (2, 4 and 5) that encoded in N and M and B is one
>> and
>> the same procedure. This does not seem to be right, since it is true
>> that N and M cannot be intersubstituted.
>>
>>
>> 7. It follows from (6) that B seems to be procedurally ambiguous. This
>> is not to mention other special uses of but as in (c-d) below.
>>
>>
>> (c) Every one but John was there.
>> But must be translated as trừ (except)
>> Mọi nguời ðều có mặt ở ðó trừ John
>> Mọi nguời trừ John ðều có mặt ở
>> ðó.
>>
>>
>> (d) You can’t expect much from him. He is but a three year old boy.
>> This but must be translated as chỉ (only/ just)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try
>> it
>> now.
>
>
> --
> Miri Hussein
> PhD Student in Linguistics
> Semantics and Pragmatics
> School of English Language and Linguistics
> Percy Building
> Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
> Website: http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/miri.hussein/
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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-- Miri Hussein PhD Student in Linguistics Semantics and Pragmatics School of English Language and Linguistics Percy Building Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU Website: http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/miri.hussein/Received on Fri Feb 1 16:42:06 2008
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