RE: RT list: Non-sentential utterances, logical form, explicatures (e.g. in poetry)

This is indeed an interesting issue. I know of no particular investigation on it, but my hunch is that the understanding of verbal messages needs to cover all the steps I pointed to above; otherwise its functioning will not be able to reach a satisfactory result. As I further stated to Stavros, I feel that the neat separation of steps does not (or, rather, should not) preclude feed-back relationships between them. It may be true that the non verbal communication achieved in your #4 situation (I prefer to call it situation than context) is a step ahead in reaching understanding; Perhaps it is a result of the way we process verbal input as opposed to visual (or, imagistic -to cover all the senses) input which seems to give reason to the folk dictum "an image is better than many words", which, to say the truth, is actually not true, for, more often than not, images need to be interpreted using so many words (i.e., all scientific images, and many non scientific as well). However, the intuitive impression is that an image offers an instantaneous set of communicative effects which, typically, seems to be quicker (instantaneous!) and more accurate than verbal messages. I can explain to you how the view from my terrace is, or I can show you a photograph of the view in which you may extract more communicative effects than those I can speak about. Here you are not only one step ahead, but a lot more!

It may be well possible that it is not clear what a LF really is. I am really hopeless at building logical expressions and, therefore, I have accepted an intuitive description of what such a thing could be. In the case of the gardener, as you show, the constructed object that corresponds to that one NP expression, would be represented in my mind as
[SOMEONE] [DID SOMETHING [LEAVE OPEN] [TO SOMETHING] or, if you prefer [LEAVE OPEN, GARDENER, DOOR] which, then goes through a deletion process, leaving only GARDENER, which has to be explicated (i.e., determined, referring to a certain person, whatever.) and implicated as a relevant response to the question, or, in our present case, as a relevant example of your question/claim

The situation #3, in the shop, is more complex descriptively, but should follow the same steps, by first making sense of the shop assistant question and answering accordingly. That this is so, should be clear if you build a ludicrous situation like

Situation 5: You are watching birds with a friend, and you ask her all excited "is that a bull finch?", to which she answer "two cokes".

Now, the answer may first baffle you, but humans being what they are, compulsive interpreters, you try desperately to find some sense to her answer. How would you go about it? If you slowly mark what your interpretative steps are in this case, you will probably get an account of steps that could match my list of processes.

I am not sure about my arguments here -I just follow a hunch as I told you at the beginning. Perhaps, my hunches will not convince you for you have though about it longer than I have. Anyway, from my perspective it has been a nice food for thought, and I thank you for it.

José Luis Guijarro
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Cádiz
11002 Cádiz, España (Spain)
tlf: (34) 956-011.613
fax: (34) 956-015.505
Received on Mon Feb 14 18:51:58 2011