On the other hand, if what is meant by "logical form" is something more
like "trying to analyze whatever you hear as a Sentence, even if it
means positing lots of empty elements, empty phrases, empty operators,"
then I will gladly join with Dr. Gibbs (presumably) in saying that's a
very radical claim and would require a lot of empirical support that so
far has not been presented here.

It seems a reasonably gentle claim to assert that we try to make sense
out of intputs that we receive. But to assert that we try to jam all
inputs into Sentence format is a far more aggressive (and less
plausible) position.

Hanno Beck
USA & Germany
Received on Tue Feb 15 21:27:02 2011

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue Feb 15 2011 - 21:28:54 GMT

I wish to suggest that Drs. Gibbs and Guijarro are both right.

Taking these examples once more:

e.2.a. “Who has left the door open?”
e.2.b. “Between if”

and

e.3.a. “Who has left the door open?”
e.3.b. “The bicycle handlebar”

It does not seem excessive to claim that a hearer of e.2.b. or e.3.b.
will, in some way, try to make sense of what she has heard. Part of
this making-sense operation is probably going to involve deciding
whether the sounds can be taken to be a phrase of a language that she
knows. With e.3.b., most of us quickly reach the conclusion -- ah yes,
it's a noun phrase (and there are no homophonous other phrases that it
could well be). With e.2.b., we do not arrive at a conclusion so
quickly, and ultimately we may be forced to surmise that we are dealing
with the peculiar expression "between if" or have mis-heard what was
said, etc.

Does "trying to make sense of what we hear" constitute "computing
logical form"? If it's rea