RT list: de dicto / de re distinction?

Dear All

This was my reaction to Ernst-August's example, for what it's worth (I sent
it to the wrong address). Although I am not among those 'more
knowledgeable', I was hoping to see an exchange on the open list, since I
couldn't see the need to invoke a de dicto/de re distinction here. Hope it's
not too late to be enlightened by someone, publicly or privately.

The utterance cited by Ernst-August doesn't seem to be significantly more or
less ambiguous than any other, but simply to license some possible
additional implicatures.
1. Basic explicature : Susan sought to convey to Jack, using language, the
information that she (Susan) had derived from (an) utterance(s) previously
addressed to her by Brigitte.
Optional additional implicatures (weak, as the example stands):
2. She did (or didn't) do this by the method of direct quotation
3. (even weaker) she also told Jack THAT it was Brigitte who told her

Best regards,

Robin

Robin Setton
Prof. of Interpretation
ETI, University of Geneva (Staff)
GIIT, Shanghai International Studies University (Visiting)

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of
ernst-august_gutt@sil.org
Sent: mercredi 14 mars 2007 13:06
To: Relevance group Internet
Subject: RT list: Would this example fall under the de dicto / de re
distinction?

Dear friends,

Would the ambiguity in the example below be considered to fall under the de
dicto / de re ambiguity in the philosophy of language?

I'd appreciate any comments on this.

Many greetings,
Ernst-August Gutt

------- Example -----
(3) Susan told Jack what Brigitte had told her.
This statement could just mean that the information Susan told Jack is (or
happens to be) the same information that Brigitte had told Susan, without
Susan having told Jack about the source of the information.
However, on another possible interpretation, (3) could have a quite
different meaning, which could be paraphrased as follows:
(4) Susan told Jack, "Brigitte told me that ."
In this case, not only would the content of what Susan told Jack be the same
as told to her by Brigitte but Susan would also tell Jack that it was
Brigitte who gave her that information.
---------- End of example -------------
Received on Fri Mar 16 04:57:00 2007