S. Nicolle writes:
>No theory exists in a vacuum; there will always be other theories
>dealing with similar or complementary areas of investigation. RT is no
>exception. Theories deling with (a subset of) the same areas of
>investigation as RT will either complement or contradict RT to varying
>degrees. Theories dealing with topics beyond the scope of RT will be
>either compatible or incompatible with RT, to different degrees. Some
>theories partially overlap in scope with RT; Fodor's Mental Models
>Theory is one such in my opinion. The question I have for the list
>concerns the relation between RT and theories covering (approximately)
>the same ground (pragmatic theories), and theories covering different
>topics (specifically syntax). Syntax first:
>In the past, the general assumption seems to have been that RT can
>quite easily 'plug in' to the most current model in the Chomskian
>program. This assumption was based on the following factors: 1) The
>Chomskian approach sets strict limits on the scope of syntactic
>processes, thereby fitting in neatly with the Fodorian modular
>approach which RT also adopts; 2) This program has been dominant in
>syntax for a long time thereby helping to situate RT in the linguistic
>mainstream; 3) Deirdre Wilson studied under Chomsky and as a result
>she and her students have been influenced by his approach.
>These are all perfectly valid reasons for selecting the Chomskian
>program as the syntactic foil to RT, but the situation in syntax at
>the moment seems to be a lot more fluid than it was in the mid-80s
>when this arrangement began. For a start, the Chomskian program is no
>longer the default syntactic approach in many institutions. The
>minimalist program (MP) was developed in response to perceived
>problems with GB and P&P, but this has recently come under attack. The
>following is an extract from Robert D. Levine's review of Johnson &
>Lappin (1999) Local Constraints vs. Economy, in J. Linguistics 38
>(2002) 177-19:
>"The MP emerges from Johnson & Lappin's tightly reasoned, pitilessly
>clinical examination as computationally expensive to the point of
>intractability, empirically deficient, stipulative at best and
>incoherent or inconsistent at worst in its internal architecture, with
>metaphysical and teleological foundations that run counter to the
>methodological premises undergirding the success of the hard scinces.
>[...] until and unless there is a coherent and substantive response to
>Johnson & Lappin's critique, the MP will have marginal credibility
>outside the increasingly narrow domain in which it is simply the
>unquestioned 'house framework'." (178)
>It would be a shame if RT became part of this "increasingly narrow
>domain", especially if the claim that the MP is "computationally
>expensive to the point of intractability" proves to be well-founded.
>We should also take into account the critique of GB and P&P accounts
>of the various binding constraints in Huang's "Anaphora" (but more of
>that later).
>I am not a syntactician, so I would value advice on where I should be
>looking for a plausible syntactic theory that is consistent with RT.
How about _Dynamic Syntax_. This is a framework developed inter alii by R.
Kempson, a 'relevance theory' author. I reviewed a review (in LINGUIST
list) of her latest book on this list.
>Cognitive Grammar is obviously at odds with RT over the scope of
>grammar, as are various other functional approaches. LFG at one time
>looked promising, at least with respect to Bantu languages, but I have
>seen a couple of convincing accounts recently of topics in Bantu
>morpho-syntax where GB is clearly superior to LFG. OT seems to be at
>an early stage and I am unsure whether it even constitutes a coherent
>program yet. I'd be interested to know what readers of the list think
>of some other less well-known approaches such as Robert Van Valin's
>Role and reference Grammar (he has worked with Randy LaPolla, who I
>think was once a member of the RT list).
>Turning to pragmatics, the field is a lot smaller, with the main
>players being RT and the neo-Gricean approach. Although I disagree
>with much of the philosophical underpinning of the neo-Gricean
>approach and believe that it does not pay adequate attention to issues
>of cognition in language use, I have seen a few neat analyses where
>the interplay of the Q-, I-, and M-principles seems to make specific
>predictions which a RT analysis would not be able to make (as far as I
>can see).
I of course may like to disagree that the field is, turning to pragmatics,
a lot smaller. And how would you distinguish between an Atlas, a Levinson,
and a Horn. I would not call them _all_ 'neo-Gricean'. There's also
discourse theory, presupposition theory, etc.
>This is the kind of level of falsifiabil[i]ty that critics
>RT have been looking for.
Or, as I prefer, the level of _vacuity_, but since the work of linguists
like A. S. Kroch and F. Kiefer, not to mention earlier work by
philosophers, this challenge has been standardly and collectively addressed
to the Griceans anyway ('the vacuity of the maxims?', 'what do
conversational maxims explain?'). More recent _specific_ criticism of _RT_
have been voiced by G. Ward and L. Horn in their reply to the essay on
phatic communication by Clarke & Zegarac in _The Journal of Linguistics_ 35.
>(Briefly the Q-principle states 'Say as much
>as you know', the I-principle states 'Say as little as necessary', and
>the M-principle states, 'Whatever you say, say it clearly'.
>Implicatures generated on the basis of these principles are ranked in
>the order Q>M>I; that is a Q implicature 'defeats' an M implicature
>and so on.)
The "Gazdar bucket", so called in a "tribute" to the cognitive psychologist
by Levinson. Incidentally, perhaps an approach like that developed by
Gazdar & Pullum may be yet another way (along with Kempson's Dynamic
Syntax) of Gricean friendly _doing syntax_.
>The combined strengths and weaknesses of the neo-Gricean approach
>vis-a-vis RT are apparent in the following extract from a review of
>Yan Huang's "Anaphora" which I wrote for Notes on Translation:
>"A more fundamental problem exists, I believe, with the neo-Gricean
>approach to implicature. In this framework, meaning can be broadly
>divided into `what is said' and what is implicated. Even though
>reference assignment (which is what occurs when an anaphor is linked
>to its antecedent) is clearly not a (totally) semantic and syntactic
>process, it seems counter-intuitive to say that reference assignment
>is the result of identifying an implicature, particularly when in the
>Gricean tradition, `what is said' is defined as the semantically
>determined aspects of meaning plus disambiguation and reference
>assignment. Alternative pragmatic approaches which allow pragmatic
>aspects of what is said (that is, inferentially determined meaning in
>addition to reference assignment and disambiguation which contributes
>to truth-conditions) should, in theory, be able to provide a more
>coherent account. One such theory, which Huang discusses, is relevance
>theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995). Unfortunately, I doubt whether
>relevance theory as it currently stands is capable of providing an
>empirically falsifiable account of anaphora resolution, (although
>Matsui 2000 provides a start in her account of bridging reference).
>This is a challenge that needs to be met."
>What I am wondering is whether RT researchers have avoided adopting
>and adapting relevant insights from our biggest rival simply because
>we want to be seen to be different. There is no doubt in my mind that
>RT is on more secure theoretical ground than neo-Gricean pragmatics,
>but it does lack specificity of the Q-, I-, and M-principles. These
>principles and the ranking of the implicatures they generate, as
>presented by Levinson and Huang, are simply stipulations at the
>moment. However, if it could be shown that they follow from the more
>general cognitive principles that underpin RT then there could be no
>question of RT stealing the neo-Griceans' clothes, rather the
>neo-Gricean approach could be largely subsumed within RT.
>As many of you know, I enjoy playing devil's advocate, so please treat
>this in the spirit of open enquiry in which it is intended.
There was a recent discussion in the LINGUIST list (with contributions by
philosopher-linguistic G. R. Sampson et al) about falsiability in
linguistics and the issue of whether the value of 'usefulness' should not
be preferred over it. As often, the debate yielded no definite conclusions.
I think it would be indeed a good thing (but I'm no methodologist) to
compare the different approaches to 'the philosophy of science' (Popper,
Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc.) when it comes to something like The
Gricean Theory, and perhaps RT in particular. (Some Griceans would say --
as Avramides does -- that they are not doing 'theory' but 'analysis').
Of course, the initial caveat is that the Gricean programme (and some of
its later developments) arose within a philosophical framework and that in
philosophy the issues are not quite like in _science_.
In matters of philosophy, the Gricean approach provides an insight which is
not free of conceptual problems -- the biggest being identified by W. Davis
in his book-lenght study of the notion of implicature (for the Cambridge
Studies in Philosophy Series) -- unfortunately _not_ quoted by Levinson's
opus magnum, but given critical review by philosophers J. Saul and M. Green).
For some philosophy-oriented _linguists_, like Horn, who work with a
predominantly English corpus and with (their own) native speaker
intuitions, intuitions still play a role, as they've often done in
philosophy. So, things like Gazdar's bucket are being tested vis a vis
one's intuitions. But then, when it comes to foreign languages, things
_are_ admittedly bound to be different.
INTUITION PLUS 'HEALTHY' STIPULATION.
'Anaphora' is a trick for _any_ theory so no wonder it's a trick for the
Gricean anyway. Nicolle writes: "it seems counter-intuitive to say that
reference assignment is the result of identifying an implicature,
particularly when in the Gricean tradition, `what is said' is defined as
the semantically determined aspects of meaning plus disambiguation and
reference assignment."
There is a lot of stipulation, but a not unhealthy one, in the Gricean
treatment of this. Grice's own views on 'He is in a grip of a vice' and
'The Prime Minister is a great man' may be relevant here. What does he say
about "reference assignment" in such cases in its interface with what in
'Retrospective Epilogue' calls the dictive component ("what-is-said").
Grice writes:
"Suppose someone to have uttererd the sentence
'He is in the grip of a vice' [...] One would
know what the speaker HAS SAID, about some particular
PERSON [...] x that [...] some part of x's person
was caught in a certain kind of tool [...B]ut for
a FULL SPECIFICATION of what the speaker has SAID
one would need to know _the identity of x_. ... This
brief indication of my use of "say" leaves it open
whether the man who says (today) 'Harold Wilson
is a great man' and another one who says (also today)
'The British Prime Minister is a great man' would,
IF EACH KNEW THAT THE TWO SINGULAR TERMS HAD THE
SAME REFERENCE, have SAID the SAME THING."
Studies in the Way of Words, p. 25.
(emphasis mine.)
-- cf. Carston on the explicit-implicit distintion. What Grice is toying
here, it seems, is, inter alia, whether to treat 'say' as introducing
either a transparent or an opaque context for a 'that'-clause. Note his
caveat, 'if each KNEW that the two singular terms had the same reference',
where 'know' invites a _transparent_ context (*He knew that 2+2=5).
And I'm sure problems remain,
Cheers,
JL.
Refs.
Carston R. Pragmatics & the explicit-implicit distinction. UCL
Davis WA. Implicature. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy.
Kiefer F. What do conversational maxims explain? Linguisticae
Investigationes 3 57-74.
Green MS. Review of Davis, Implicature. MS.
Grice HP. Logic & conversation. 1967. Mimeo. Repr. in revised form, 1987,
in WOW.
Studies in the Way of Words. [WOW]. Harvard.
Kempson RM & al, Dynamic Syntax. Blackwell.
Levinson SC. Presumptive meanings: the theory of generalised conversational
implicature.
Saul J. Review of Davis, Implicature. Nous.
Sperber D & D Wilson. Relevance: communication & cognition. Blackwell.
Ward G & LR Horn. Journal of Linguistics. 35.555-64.
==
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