on 23.02.2001 1:26 Uhr, J L Speranza at jls@netverk.com.ar wrote:
> A naive question from a naive philosopher of language.
And a naïve response from a naïve pragmaticist/linguist:
>
> ...
>
> It seems we can loosely speak of syntactic "disambiguation" here in terms of
> scope (and thus leading to the constitution of an "explicature") but surely
> no strict lexical or semantic "polysemy" is involved, and thus, I'm not sure
> if the phenomenon involves a case of standard Gricean implicature or even a
> RT "explicature".
Why should scope ambiguities be different from lexical ambiguities as far as
pragmatic interpretation is concerned? I don't see the point: both phenomena
impact the proposition conveyed by an utterance, i.e. it's explicature, and
both have to be disambiguated pragmatically (although in your example 'old
books and maps' this process can be helped in oral communication by the use
of intonation/pause).
Christoph
Christoph Unger
Mozartstr. 26
D-35625 Huettenberg
Germany
Phone: (49) 6403 73782
Fax (and office phone): (49) 6403 78066
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