Dear Thorstein,
The main point I am addressing in my reply is your observation:
"... hence technically speaking the proposition confirmed by
> > the speaker ought to be an implicature rather than an explicature."
If my suspicion that the distinction between explicature and implicature is
a theoretically spurious one, is true, then, strictly speaking, the
observation of there being no explicature applies not only utterances
without encoded elements (like your examples), but to a l l utterances -
even those that do have encoded elements contributing to propositional
content. Encoded elements naturally constrain the number of possible
interpretations, but the degree to which they do that does not change the
theoretical status of the set of communicated assumptions (e.g. explicatures
versus implicatures) in any principled way.
So, what I am trying to point out is that the problem you have touched on
may be far more general than the cases you mentioned.
Best wishes,
Ernst-August
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thorstein Fretheim [mailto:thorstein.fretheim@hf.ntnu.no]
> Sent: 27 February 2004 02:14
> To: ernst-august_gutt@sil.org
> Subject: RE: RT list: semantic/pragmatic hybrids
>
>
> Dear Ernst-August,
>
> Yes, but in your subsentential examples there is an encoded element
> which certainly does contribute to the proposition expressed, like
> "Ok" or "Two Mars bars". In my examples there was no comparable item.
>
> Thanks for the attachment.
>
> Best,
>
> Thorstein
>
> >Dear Thorstein,
> >
> >Though I have not had the time to check this out in detail, I
> have suspected
> >for a couple of years now that the explicature-implicature distinction is
> >essentially a descriptive one, possibly a leftover from Gricean
> pragmatics
> >(cf. my e-mail on "plicatures", 26.8.01; unfortunately, the only
> responses
> >it evoked at the time were on the choice of the term, not the substance.)
> >This suspicion has been strengthened by Robyn Carston's findings in
> >'Thoughts and utterances" that utterances do not have a
> propositional form.
> >Another indicator seems to be that in strict relevance-theoretic terms,
> >explicatures are anyhow contextual implications: they are follow neither
> >from the utterance alone nor from the context but only from the
> inferential
> >combination of the two.
> >
> >Going even further, I am no longer sure that sentences generally have a
> >logical form in the sense of some sort of coherent "blueprint of a
> >proposition" or "assumption schema". It seems that, at least from the
> >pragmatic side, the output of the linguistic module could just
> be a sequence
> >of clues that help the comprehension module construct (in real time) or
> >select an assumption schema. If this is the case, then the core defining
> >feature of explicature as the development of a logical form would have
> >disappeared. Question in a shop: "How can I help?" "Two Mars
> bars, please".
> >It seems hard to see how the NP "two Mars bars" could l i n g u
> i s t i c a
> >l l y lead to a logical form like "X wants two Mars bars".
> (Actually, who
> >says that the verb to be supplied should not be 'give': "Give me two mars
> >bars, please"? Or what about: "X wants to buy two mars bars" etc.?) The
> >assumption schema into which the contents of the NP fits has to be found
> >pragmatically, not linguistically.
> >
> >Like the examples you give, sub-sentential utterances would
> suggest that the
> >distinction is at best a graded one. Question: "How is your mother?"
> >Answers: a) "ok"; b) "she is ok"; c) "she is ok today" d) "my
> mother is ok
> >today" etc.
> >
> >For further thoughts, see the attached excerpt "Verbal
> communication without
> >propositional or logical form?". It also addresses the question of why we
> >have the intuition of "sentence meaning". It would be good to get some
> >feedback on this.
> >
> >Best wishes,
> >Ernst-August Gutt
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-relevance@ling.ucl.ac.uk
> > > [mailto:owner-relevance@ling.ucl.ac.uk]On Behalf Of Thorstein Fretheim
> > > Sent: 26 February 2004 23:55
> > > To: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
> > > Subject: RT list: semantic/pragmatic hybrids
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > As we all know, the relevance-theoretic explicature is a
> > > 'semantic-pragmatic hybrid'. For a hearer it involves a component of
> > > pragmatically derived meaning as well as a component of
> > > linguistically decoded (conceptual) meaning, and the pragmatically
> > > derived meaning is the output of saturation or free enrichment. Now,
> > > if someone answers a yes/no question by uttering no more than "Of
> > > course", or "Absolutely", or "Sure", or "Probably", there does not
> > > seem to be any semantic template or logical form present that could
> > > serve as the linguistic component of the input to a pragmatic process
> > > whose output is a truth-evaluable proposition. The only
> > > linguistically present items are clues to the pragmatic recovery of a
> > > communicated attitude to some proposition; it appears that retrieval
> > > of the (explicated?) proposition is wholly due to context-dependent
> > > inference - hence technically speaking the proposition confirmed by
> > > the speaker ought to be an implicature rather than an explicature.
> > > Yet intuitively, that sort of answer is just as explicit as any other
> > > subsentential answer.
> > > Do you know of anyone who has proposed an RT analysis of this type of
> > > subsentential answer?
> > > Obviously, response words like "Yes" and "No" give rise to much the
> > > same problem, though these seem to encode a procedure, while the
> > > adverbials mentioned above certainly have a conceptual (but not
> > > truth-conditional) meaning.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Thorstein Fretheim
> > > Trondheim, Norway
> > >
> > >
> > >
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