Re: RT list: Non-sentential utterances, logical form, explicatures (e.g. in poetry)

 
You definitely have to assign a phrase structure. Otherwise you will not be able to start interpreting. Try this one:

Patriotism! ... patriotism noses botox summer

Upper after never seldom on top of

Nice poor lucky noisy beautiful

My our you him we her her her ... HER!

It is impossible to assign it a phrase structure (with the exception, perhaps, of the third line --with a syntactic reason, of course!), although all words are English (so it was with my previous quiz expression). Of course, the neat separation of my five steps above does not resemble real processing. It is a mere device to describe as explicitly as possible the many cognitive processes involved which happen almost simultaneously (and may, perhaps, even show some feed-back relationships between them).

What I claim is that all the five processes are needed for trying an interpretation, although some, like, for instance, the extracting of the explicatures, may not yield full propositions, but rather semi-propositional representations (in the way Sperber described them in some of his papers). This is what leaves the final interpretation uncertain and depending on the personal contexts we may have constructed in order to extract some likely sense of the expression.

El dia 13 feb 2011 17:22, Stavros Assimakopoulos <stavros.assimakopoulos@googlemail.com> escribió:
> I can't help but sense that we are slightly leaving the initial topic
> and delving into one which is immensely more complex and foundational.
> Either way, as far as I understand Chomsky's account in relation to
> parsing (and there is a big chance that I don't properly), the
> suggestion is that syntax is encapsulated and meaning comes in at
> another level. The example you mentioned could in principle be
> approached this way, but considering poetic language and the fact that
> there are no verbs present, things are more complicated in my view:
>
> Seven stars in the still water,
> And seven in the sky;
> Seven sins on the the King's daughter,
> Deep in her soul to lie.
>
> If you don't have access to the meaning of the words here, how can you
> reach a syntactic representation which would assume that the implied
> verb is something like 'there are' as opposed to any other verb, hence
> that there is no subject present. I hope my previous comment didn't
> hint at the conclusion that syntax is not necessary for decoding or
> whatever have you. I merely suggested that syntax cannot always
> provide us with some full template to which we will then assign
> meaning. It might be preferable to have syntax and semantics working
> together, and what I had in mind is categorial frameworks like HPSG or
> Dynamic Syntax. I hope this clarifies things a bit further.
>
> Best,
> Stavros
>
> On 13 February 2011 10:43, Jose Luis Guijarro Morales
> <joseluis.guijarro@uca.es> wrote:
>
>> Yes, you are right. Like Sperber and Wilson, I believe that the chomskyan
>> frame is quite adequate to clarify things. And to those that would question
>> the basic syntactic level, as you seem to be claiming, I propose this quiz.
>>
>> What meaning do you think the following chain has?
>>
>> That that is is that that is not is not that that is is not that that is not
>> nor is that that is not that that is is that it?
>>
>> Believe it or not, I have written it without the slightless hesitation,
>> which you would also be able to do had you heard it pronounced it just once
>> (as I did).
>>
>> As soon as we hear it, we immediately map the appropriate intonation of the
>> expression with a phrase structure. It is only AFTER we have easily done
>> that apparently difficult feat that we are able to go on along the other
>> steps that I pointed to yesterday until we complete the whole interpretation
>> process.
>>
>> Do you have a better description of it?
>>
>> I'd be mighty interested in reading it!
>>
>> José Luis Guijarro
>> Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
>> Universidad de Cádiz
>> 11002 Cádiz, España (Spain)
>> tlf: (34) 956-011.613
>> fax: (34) 956-015.505
>>
>
>
> --
> Stavros Assimakopoulos
> Postdoctoral Investigator
> Department of Philosophy I
> University of Granada
> ------------------------------------
> http://www.ugr.es/~stavros/ [ http://www.ugr.es/~stavros/ ]
>

José Luis Guijarro
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Cádiz
11002 Cádiz, España (Spain)
tlf: (34) 956-011.613
fax: (34) 956-015.505
Received on Sun Feb 13 17:29:12 2011