RT list: No buts about it

 No 'but'

but. Old English, 'by out'.

"Surely 'by out' is our [ampersand]"
             Whitehead/Russell, PM

Hussein:

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.

It would also be of intrinsic interest to check the ways the Greeks and the Romans had to express this. Let's be reminded that Grice's first immersion in languages was Greek and Latin (not counting his native English), and 'translating' for him would mean 'to English', 'Englished'.

Horn was recently making reference to Dionyssos, Peri suntheseos --, and I would assume it must deal with problems of conjunction.

It is said that the discoverers of "p & q" ["p . q" in PM] commutative with "q & p" (conversational implicature) and underlying "p but q" (conventional implicature _sans_ truth-conditionality), were the Stoics (vide Mates, colleague of Grice at UC/B).

But we should consider all possibilities:

Consider Xanthos's utterance in the Iliad (Grice must have been very familiar with)

kai liên s' eti nun ge saôsomen obrim' Achilleu: alla toi enguthen êmar olethrion: oude toi hêmeis

aitioi, alla theos e megas kai Moira krataiê. oude gar hêmeterêi bradutêti te nôcheliêi te

Trôes ap' ômoiin Patroklou teuche' helonto alla theôn ôristos, hon êükomos teke Lêtô,

ektan' eni promachoisi kai Hektori kudos edôke. nôï de kai ken hama pnoiêi Zephuroio theoimen,

hên per elaphrotatên phas' emmenai: alla soi autôi morsimon esti theôi te kai aneri iphi damênai.

There seem to be a lot of 'buts' there, but none comes up in the English versions (below)*

On the other hand, I'm not sure the Greeks believed, as Grice's _father_ did that "she may be poor but she's also honest" (Great War sexist horrible first line, adapted -- and cited by Grice as his first analysis of 'but' in "Causal theory of perception", section excerpted FROM WOW).

Haven't checked the OED, but wonder what the first use of the rather silly and arrogant, 'no buts about it' came out.

Cheers,

J. L. Speranza
The Grice Club, etc.

----
("Aye verily, yet for this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles, 
albeit the day of doom is nigh thee, nor shall we be the cause thereof, but a mighty god and overpowering Fate. For it was 
not through sloth or slackness of ours that the Trojans 
availed to strip the harness from the shoulders of Patroclus, 
but one, far the best of gods, even he that fair-haired Leto 
bare, slew him amid the foremost fighters and gave glory to Hector. But for us twain, we could run swift as the blast 
of the West 
Wind, which, men say, is of all winds the fleetest; nay, it is thine own 
self that art fated to be slain in fight by a god and a mortal.")
 
________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever.  Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com