In the abstract for the Herefordshire talk -- forwarded to this forum by M.
Groefsema -- T Fretheim, Clare, Cambridge, writes:
"A concessive relation between p & q obtains when p & q
are both true but the utterer makes it mutually manifest
to the addressee that she attributes to either
a. the addressee in the past
b. the addressee
c. a third person (including people in general)
a belief that p would rather cause ~q. This can be achieved simply by means
of a juxtaposition of utterances plus contextual information, as in:
(1) He had £100. That was not enough to take him
to Tashkent and back.
====================
Doesn't this require, also, a special intonational contour around "not",
and not just plain JUXTAPOSION OR ASYNDESIS -- I ask since Fretheim has
dealt with this in his contribution to Kasher's conversational implicature
reader ('The Effect of Intonation on Implicature'), i.e. as
1b. He had $100. That was _not_ enough to make him
to Tashkent and back.
cfr. Levinson on this in _Presumptive Meanings_, p.125. I am interested
because it would seem as if, at least for Grice, _parataxis_ or unmarked
juxtaposition is rather concessivity-neutral? In _Logic & Conversation_
(IV), he writes:
"We start with the supposition that a certain segment of ordinary discourse
is, at least to all appearances, FREE FROM LOGICAL CONNECTIVES, and other
logical particles. Whatever LOGICAL FORM it may possess is DISCREETLY
CONCEALED. It might even be that actual languages not only in fact exhibit
this feature, but also MUST exhibit it. WE MIGHT expect the language which
we are sketching to contain a word or words whose function is to express
conjunction. This equipment MIGHT ****NOT**** be required in order to give
utterers the capacity to make conjunctive assertions; this much they might
achieve SIMPLY by PILING UP component assertions WITHOUT GIVING THEM THE
LUXURY OF A CONJUNCTIVE [let alone, concessive. JLS] GARB in the shape of
linkage by the presence of such words as "and" ("To say "It is raining. It
will be raining soon" seems to say NO MORE AND NO LESS than "It is raining
and it will rain harder soon") (_Studies in the Way of Words_, pp.68, 70)
=====================
"or a conjunction of sentences linked by means of "but" as in (2):
(2) He had £100 but _that_ was not enough to take him to Tashkent and back.
"or it can be achieved by means of a specific _concessive marker_ which is
specialised for the encoding of a concessive relation between propositions
as in (3):
(3) Although he had £100,
_that_ was not enough to take him to Tashkent and back.
(4) He had £100. _Still_, that was _not_ enough to take him to Tashkent and
back.
(5) He had £100, tho' _that_ was _not_ enough to take him to Tashkent and
back.
English captures concessivity by using a variety of concessive markers like
the above, plus ""nevertheless", "yet", "even so", "all the same",
"anyway", and "after all". The Norwegians, on the other hand, favour
IMPLICATURE."
===
My ref. to J. C. Wilson is a credit to Grice's source in that lecture, viz.
the old Wykeham prof. of logic's statement in _Statement & Inference_ and
his idea of a specific conversational _metier_ for each connective
(credited by Grice himself in Studies on e.g. p.75).
I guess the idea is that parataxis is _neutral_ as to concessivity. All
this may _also_ relate to RT's idea of "explicature". How much of
concessivity belongs in implicature (100% for Grice, when implied, 0% when
lexically marked?) and how much in ex-plicature?
Best,
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 541148241050 Tel 542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
jls@netverk.com.ar
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