Re: RT list: Logical Form

Dear all,

As I see it, it all depends on the notion of logical form that RT
encompasses. Maybe I have been too liberal in my understanding, but I
do think that the original RT argument for a logical form is nothing
more than: having heard the utterance "on the top shelf", the relevant
concepts are activated (the conceptual ones TOP and SHELF and the
procedural ones ON and THE - if I may be excused the simplification)
and they provide an extremely weak, but nonetheless decisive direction
for the inferential processor to start working (not after they are all
activated, but on a roughly word-by-word basis). In this picture, the
very purpose of the logical form is to provide a minimal clue
regarding the directions in which the intended meaning and context are
to be constructed. Otherwise, there would be no way to exclude some
completely irrelevant interpretation (e.g. "on the top shelf" to mean
"the sky is blue" or whatever). I think that the experimental work of
Rubio Fernandez (see Journal of Semantics 2007, 2008 for example), and
the earlier one of Barsalou and colleagues that she builds on (the
reference escapes me now), point to the conclusion that no matter how
powerful context is, there are some context-independent aspects of
conceptual meaning that remain activated during interpretation. These
could arguably be remnants of the logical form while the latter is
being developed. I do share the exact same motivation (maybe even
worries) that most of the contributors here have, but I don't think
that we need to be blaming the fault on such a weak conception of
logical form (unless this is not what Sperber and Wilson originally
had in mind, and I cannot but agree with Wedgwood that this is not at
all clear in the core RT literature).

As I have been thinking for quite some time now, and am glad to see
that it is becoming clearer and clearer, we need to be looking at more
contextualist semantic options from an RT perspective, and Kasia is
more than right in reminding us the relevance of her Default Semantics
account. Even so, it is crucial not to get carried away and erase
decoding altogether, since no matter how powerful inference might be,
it still needs to work on the basis of something solid, even if this
is merely a pointer for the construction of some meaning (which would
go against RT's Fodorian atomistic commitment, but NOT against the
positing of a minimal encoded content, which is what logical form
stands for).

I hope I haven't gotten too carried away in my suggestion here, but
this is really exciting territory and it happens to fall squarely
within what I have been working on for quite some time now.

All the best,
Stavros

P.S. By the way, if we need to say that syntax has something to do
with the recovery of a minimally specifiable logical form, and I think
we do, I would tend to go with Dynamic Syntax (and Wedgwood,
forthcoming) in thinking of syntax as encoding procedural information
regarding the ON-LINE, step-by-step interpretation of the utterance at
hand. But this would be an even harder question to tackle, so I will
have to leave it aside to the more informed followers of the list.

On 17 February 2011 10:32, N Burton-Roberts
<n.burton-roberts@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> A further contribution on the very useful debate on Logical Form, following those of Ray Gibbs, Thorsten Fretheim and Stavros Assimakopoulos..
>
> One of the problems with LF is that it seems to involve a processing circularity.  How do you decide what LF to assign to an utterance (of, say, "On the top shelf")?  It seems to me you need to make a guess as to the thought the speaker/writer intended to express by means of that utterance. But if that is how it is done, once that thought has been accessed, it is not clear what role is left for Logical Form (considered as level of linguistic representation) in interpretation. Accessing a Logical Form cannot be a step, let alone a necessary step, in the process of interpretation (i.e. the process of guessing the thought expressed).
>
> If there are Logical Forms as such, I incline to Fodor's view: 'I think that LF is a level of description not of English, but of Mentalese...' (LOT2 (2008) page  78, Note 50).
>
> Dan Wedgwood ('Semantic minimalism and Relevance theory' JL 43:3 (2007, page 679) wrote "Relevance theorists have tended to assume that RT can be used more or less as an adjunct to fairly conventional approaches to other parts of linguistic theory. It has sometimes been presented as a pragmatic framework to complement more or less independent work in syntax and semantics.... But...RT has more radical consequences, whether we like it or not. In effect, this constitutes a break from conventional perspectives on semantics." He suggests that relevance theorists should not be "afraid to see through the implications of this".
>        RT's adoption of standard linguistic theory's notion of LF as a level of linguistic representation is a case in point, I believe; it is one very salient respect in which RT presents itself as a complementary adjunct to conventional linguistic theory. This is effectively what I argued in the paper that Thorsten Fretheim refers to (but see also my 2005 JL review of Robyn Carston's aptly entitled book, 'Thoughts and Utterances'). I agree with Ray Gibbs that RT has nothing to lose by dropping LF as a level of linguistic representation.  In doing so, it would present itself more clearly and accurately, not as an adjunct, but as a challenge to conventional linguistic wisdom.
>
> Best wishes - Noel.
>
> Noel Burton-Roberts
> Professor of English Language & Linguistics
> Newcastle University UK
> (44) (0)191 222 7753
> http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/staff/profile/n.burton-roberts
>
>
>

-- 
Stavros Assimakopoulos
Postdoctoral Investigator
Department of Philosophy I
University of Granada
------------------------------------
http://www.ugr.es/~stavros/