From LINGUIST List: Vol-13-423. Feb 16 2002. ISSN: 1068-4875.
Home Page: http://linguistlist.org/
Date: 15 Feb 2002
From: Julian Bradfield
Subject: causal/resultative use of "and"
This is a question that has come up on another list, while discussing
the translation of idiomatic uses.
In English, and all other languages known to the participants so far,
the word "and" can have a causal or resultative meaning, as in
Give me the money and I'll let you go.
The question arose, is there any language in which the word for "and"
in its plain boolean sense, or in its plain temporal sequencing sense,
*cannot* be used in the causal sense?
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My answer: Can't we always built up what Grice would call an
"idiosyncratic" procedure. E.g. To utter *"P & Q" (where * is a
mode-indicator) iff U (Utterer) wills A (Audience) judges U accepts P AND U
accepts Q (where AND is the Boolean operator). In fact that's what Grice
was proposing as from as early as 1952 (as cited by Strawson, _Introduction
to Logical Theory_) when defend Russell/Whitehead's truth-conditional
'sense' of "and" as the only _relevant_ one; the remaining bunch of
so-called 'senses' (plain temporal sequencing, causal/resultative) -- some
of them highly relevant -- being just 'uses' (as Bradfield hs it) or to
wit: evaporable conversational implicatures. If so, English is the language
you are looking for. Refs: H. P. Grice, _Studies in the Way of Words_ (on
'and' on p 22 f -- & further refs. for 'and' in index: 67-70, 201, 276;
p.124 f for 'idiolect' meaning; for _resultant procedures_ cf Grice in
_Aspects of Reason_, p. 54f.
==
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