RT list: "South of France": How Subsentential Can Grice Get?

When K. M. Jaszczolt refers to the “later Wittgenstein”, and Noel B-R's
points reminds me of Strawsonian attempts to see things, I wonder if it’s
not time for a little Gricean interlude. First, the ‘crosslinguistic’
example provided by Gutt. In his message of 2/16/2011 he retreats to his
'native' language (as Chomsky would have it) and writes:

A: Wem hast du von diesem Brief erzählt?
B: Meinen Eltern.

Gutt is dubious what role "logical form" (never mind "explicature") may
have to do with _that_: "[T]he fact that [B] chose a case marked phrase
(hence the choice of German for this example [But cfr. below my case with
"Her" versus "She" in 'native' English. JLS]), and furthermore assuming that
case is assigned here by grammatical structure, this would be a strong
incentive to the audience to build up a well-formed grammatical structure of
which this phrase would be a constituent, and so the specific assumption
[U] _told his parents about the letter_ would be quite strongly
communicated. In fact, if the response had not been appropriately case marked, e.g.
'Meine Eltern', it would have been felt unfelicitous. Whether this process
necessitates the theoretical recognition of concepts like 'logical form'
and/or
'explicature' seems unclear at this time."

In a way, Gutt's example relates to the two examples provided by A. Hall
(the second apres Merchant) at
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/alison/Fragments_Oct08.pdf. (work referred to by N. Allott)

(a) One example in the body of her essay. "[I]n German, to order a coffee,
you can utter the apparent subsentence ..."

[A: Can I help you?]
B: Einen Kaffee.

Hall writes:

“Einen Kaffee” (a-ACC coffee). Accusative case on the object is
obligatory, as it would be if the fragment were embedded in a full overt sentence: “
Ein ...". (When in doubt, I make a _point_ when in Germany of _allways_
[sic] just explicate "Coffee", since, for one, I would be displeased if they
do not refill my cup. It simplifies things so). (b) The other example is
in a footnote she deals with similar example (involving the dative rather
than the accusative case, though – and relying on Jason Merchant’s
cross-linguistic evidence from “The syntax of silence”): Her other example
concerns case, and I have provided below a case with "She" and "Her" which
seems to do the job just as well -- without a need for
'native'-language-switch.

A: Wem sieht er ähnlich?
B: Seinem Vater.

and writes, counterfactually (?): "If B's reply were not a case of
syntactic ellipsis, it would be a mystery why dative case is mandatory [for a
'felicitous' move, as it were -- cfr. Gutt above] while nominative case,
*which would be expected if the fragment were subsentential*, is judged
ungrammatical". I'm not sure about the asterisked bit, "which would be expected
if the fragment were subsentential", though, butperhaps A.-E. Gutt is!

Now for some neo-Gricean some variants, and a palaeo-Gricean one:

A: I’m no hungry!
B: On the top shelf [+> that’s where the jar of marmalade is, if you are
looking for it -- cfr. Austin's own cupboard conditional]
Versus: ---- The top shelf.
--- Top shelf.
--- Top.

A: Where does C live?
B: C lives somewhere in the South of France.
----- He lives somewhere in the South of France. (Or ""She" lives
somewhere in the South of France" as the case might be).
--- Somewhere in the South of France (Grice, WoW: 32)
----- The South of France
---- South of France.

Bringing Merchant home?

A: Who does he resemble? (after Hall, but sticking with English)
B: Her.
----- She.

A Latin transliteration of Grice’s example should provide some evidence
why Sidonius was the first to have used "implicatura", if only in Latin --
vide Short/Lewis, "A Latin Dictionary", 'implicatura: entanglement").

---- Pars Provinciae (“The part of Province” – as answer to the
question, “Where does C live?”). Or: "Una pars Provinciae" ('one part of
Province). Ungrammatical. It should be, in the appropriate case:
--- Parte Provinciae.

In an inflected language like Latin, “Somewhere in the South of France”
should not be understood as being in the nominative case. (I'm simplifying
things and taking Provence as the epitome, as it should, of the South of
France _that counts_)(But yet, in my reading of Hall above, about the
'nominative' case, it seems like we are forgetting that the nominative case is
just an inflected case as any of the others. No primacy should be given to it?
-- but cfr. Grice for 'ontological correlates' below).

----- THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND. Why Grice is Not Wittgenstein.

In a message dated 2/14 indeed N. Allott had provided the full context
from R. Carston, in Mind & Language, vol. 17, p. 130:

“Consider the following very ordinary situation: it’s breakfast time and,
coming into the kitchen, I see my companion searching around in the lower
reaches of a cupboard; knowing his breakfast habits, I guess that he’s
looking for a jar of marmalade and I utter: … On the top shelf. … Although
the proposition I have expressed here is something like The marmalade is on
the top shelf, the linguistic semantic input to the pragmatic processor is,
arguably, just whatever meaning the language confers on that prepositional
 phrase, that is, a far from fully propositional logical form, one which
consists of just a location constituent (which denotes a property).”

Now, I don’t know about the later Wittgenstein, but since Carston has
expanded on this in her (as Noel Burton-Roberts has it, aptly named "Thoughts
and Utterances"), and, interestingly quoting from S/W 1986/1995 on
'subpropositional logical form', etc., AND noting that, in her view, Grice's
interests in this area (of subsententials) were at best 'peripheral' (No "a
red-pillar box", bur rather the full proposition, "That pillar-box seems
_red_ to me", etc. -- vide below Grice on 'sense data'), I would like to
bring, explicitly, some material on what Grice regarded as involving some
'metaphysical complications' of any account of 'subpropositional'
constituents worth their philosophical price. First, metaphysical, as it should
(rather than epistemic or linguistic):

ONTOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF SUBPROPOSITIONAL CONSTITUENTS:

Consider, for example, this rather convoluted (in the best Griceian way)
analysis of quantifers -- an element in the _first_ constituent of a
'propositional complex', according to Grice, "Reply to Richards”. This is a
rather longish reply to Richard Grandy and Richard Warner. In the particular
bit I’m quoting from, Grice is addressing the alleged primacy (undefined,
though) of the ‘proposition’. Grice provides a reply which aims at
analyzing what we mean by a proposition (or ‘propositional complex’ as he
prefers) in terms of its (sub)constituents, and spends some time in their ‘
ontological correlates’ (and keep in mind Carston above, 'going ontological': “a
location constituent (which denotes a property”)).

In particular Grice explores a second-order set theory to account for
various quantificational phrases. And he is NOT having in view things like:

"The King of France!"

(cfr. A. Hall, "The baby!" (+> "What have I done with it?" -- uttered by
worried mother))

Grice is exploring neo-traditionalist tendencies in logic as associated
with his joint work with Peter Strawson, and is fascinated by the fact that
in this view even singular phrases tend to bear a 'universalist' analysis.
Note, too, that while this is just a reposte to Grandy/Warner, Grice takes
his time to provide sub-divisions for different subpropositional
quantificational phrases, which should be evidence of the primacy he regarded the
topic showed.

As with WoW:VI, cited below, Grice provides extensionalist (in
set-theoretic terms) while leaving room for an alternative intensionalist account (in
terms of 'properties').

"[1] [W]e associate with the subject-expression of a canonically
formulated sentence [expressing a proposition, bearer of truth] a set of at least
second order. If the subject-expression is a singular name, its ontological
correlate will be the singleton of the singleton of the entity which bears
that name. ... [2] If the subject-expression is an indefinite
quantificational phrase ..., its ontological correlate will be the set of all singletons
whose sole element if an item belonging to the extension of the predicate
to which the indefinite modifier is attached. ... [3] If the
subject-expression is a universal quantificational [all-together, rather than
one-at-a-time] phrase, ... its ontological correlate will be the singleton whose
sole element is the set which forms the extension of the predicate to which
the universal quantifier is attached." (Reply to Richards, p. 77ff).

It would not be much of a stretch to apply that 'constructivist' account
to 'propositions' (qua families of 'propositional complexes' in Grice's
jargon) to "On the top shelf"--- or as I prefer, "On the mat".('The cat is on
the mat'). I am fascinated by the Longman Dictionary of English that
lists, ‘on the mat’ to mean, ‘being punished’, with ‘cat’ meaning ‘nasty
woman’. Some title for a wicked novel. Back to Grice’s very own
subsentential "Provence" example cited above:

“What he said”: “Somewhere in the South of France”.
(ODD implicature: "He doesn't know WHERE _in the South of France_").

Note, incidentally, that while this would be a simple case of syntactic
ellipsis (rather than semantic or pragmatic ellipsis, in Merchant’s view --
but "Do not multiply ellipses beyond necessity"), Grice, as we've seen, can
go unashamedly subpropositional (subsentential), providing the ‘idiomatic’
, "Somewhere in the South of France" rather than the clumsier
[over-informative], "C lives somewhere in the South of France" – (Surely “_He_ [or
'she'] lives in the South of France” is still a different animal). He (Grice,
rather than the South-of-France dweller) didn’t seem to have made much of
the alleged complication this involves: “He said that C lived in the
South of France.” “He did not! He said, “Somewhere in the South of France”. “
Surely he explicated ‘he lived’”. “Surely not – not the type of
explicature he was up to!” and so on, which I will lead to neo-Griceians vs.
post-Griceians, while I stick with the palaeo.

In a similar fashion (I was amused by S. Lucas’s reference to it being
natural that ‘relevance theorists’ will disagree on this and that) A. Hall
(in the work referred to by N. Allott, and elsewhere – A. Hall is currently
researching the compositionality principle at the Nicod) has also explored
this ‘subpropositional logical forms’ (Sperber’s and Wilson’s term) in
terms of subpropositional constituents. Incidentally, I prefer, as I’m sure
you should, too, to use 'sub', as in 'subsentential' -- "On the top
shelf" -- rather than, as per subject of this thread, "non-sentential", which
seems
to be different in scope -- cf. Guijarro: a totally out-of-the-blue
utterance of "Between if": nonsentential but NOT subpropositional).

GRICE’S SHAGGY-DOG STORY

For the record, one sees that Grice uses 'subsentential' in at least two
places of WoW: V (p. 89 – “an “incomplete” utterance-type (which may be a
nonsentential word or phrase…)” and VI (p. 119: “in case X is a
nonsentential utterance-type, claims of the form “X means ‘…,’” where the
locution is completed by a nonsentential expression”. In particular, it would be
good to play around, philosophically, with what I have elsewhere called
Grice's shaggy-dog story.

This had some philosophical bearing for Grice. Note that in

"Jones's dog (Fido) is shaggy, i.e. hairy-coated",

Grice is obsessed with getting further _onto_ the subpropositional
constituents of a simple act of meaning. NOT: "By uttering "Jones's dog is
shaggy", Utterer meant that p or q", but rather

(a) Vis-a-vis “alpha” type ‘subject-expressions’: (WoW: 131 for Grice’s
use of ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’)

By uttering, "Jones's dog"
U referred to Fido.

-- expanded by Schiffer in early work on a Gricean theory of reference in
the pages of Synthese.

(b) Vis-à-vis “beta” type ‘predicate-expressions’:

By uttering "Shaggy"
U predicated hairy-coatedness (-- cfr. Carston, 'denotes a property') of
Fido.

At this point, a quote from Grice WoW with his typical complications, as
per his footnote will just serve as an example of his ‘
analytical-philosophical’ skills.

Grice writes:

"To have explicited correlated X with each member of a set K, not only
must I have intentionally effected that a particular relation R holds between
X and all those (and only those) items which belong to K, but also my
purpose or end in setting up this relationship must have been to perform an
act as a result of which there will be some relation or other which holds
between X and all those (and only those) things which belong to K. To
the definiens, then, we should add, within the scope of the initial
quantifier, the following clause: "& U's purpose in effect that ∀x (......) is
that (Ǝ
R') (∀z)(R' 'shaggy' z≡z ϵ y (y is hairy-coated))." (WoW:133n)

Now, translate that to "On the top shelf" and the 'property' it is
denoted, and imagine if we, alla Gibbs (I admire him!) we were to think of a lab
protocol to _test_ just that! In general, Griceans, when relying on their
intuitions, are thinking they are being _experimental_. On this point,
Grice's excellent reliance on Hans Sluga [He came out as "Shuga",
unfortunately, in the Academic-Press reprint, and Grice omitted the name of Sluga
altogether in WoW:271 -- vis-a-vis:

(a) "(ix.Fx)Gx" and
(b) "G(ix.Fx)"

as providing the subpropositional 'logical form' of 'The king of France
is bald' -- "the iota-operator ... treated as being syntactically analogous
to a quantifier" vs. it being treated as "a device for forming a term".
Grice explicitly acknowledges Sluga's participation in the Berkeley
seminars, and notes that it is Grice's "intuitions" regarding _negation_ which
have him opting for (b)).

“What Grice would have said” – but merely “implicated”

In general, from what I browsed from the linguistics (rather than
philosophy) literature on this, the attitude towards an exegesis of Grice
remains patronising (most notably in this author who keeps referring to 'the
purportedly Gricean interpretation' of this -- not caring to explore on
Grice's many publications and unpublications on the subject!). In this respect,
it is a GREAT thing that Grice cared to keep ALL the seminar material he
shared with Sir Peter Strawson when giving courses on 'logical form' and
'categories' (substantials/non-substantials) at Oxford. (They are listed
by Chapman in her book on _Grice_, Palgrave).

HOW PROPOSITIONAL can children and animals be? Grice's Kantotelian
reflections

There is a related area of interest, which is explored by M. Green and
collaborator Bar-On (and Bar-On below) It refers to something like an
obsession with Grice: squarrels. They are like squirrels, but allow for closer
ethological inspection. You possibly have noted that the first utterances
babies (miscalled ‘babies’) utter are 'subpropositional' at best (or
'pre-propositional' in some cases). A. Hall makes a very good point about this. We
should call them 'pre-propositional' because they cannot feature as
'premises' in explicit pieces of reasoning. They are'pre-rational' in this
technical sense. They need an expansion before they can count as steps in a
reasoning chain. Green and Bar-On (in their joint "Lionspeak", available online)
consider this area of interest (also explored by T. Wharton in his book on
the pragmatics of 'gestures'). Their example I adapt by using Lewis
Carroll:

DOVE (hutching eggs, as she perceives long-necked Alice): Serpent!
ALICE: I'm not a serpent. I'm a little girl. ---- (as the conversation
develops). It's true I do I eat eggs -- at breakfast.
DOVE: SERPENT!
(Discussed by Sutherland, "Language and Lewis Carroll", Mouton).

Bar-On and Green focus on pre- (rather than sub-) propositional)
'utterances' like a bird's cry of alarm above (“Serpent!”). It would be pedantic
to refer to the _content_ of this 'psychological' attitude on the part of
the dove as involving a full proposition, complete with logical form.
Doves do not need to be Aristotelian, in this sense. The point would be then
to explore the role of pre-propositional 'content' in the,
say, phylogenesis and ontogenesis of ... meaning. A topic which while
peripheral in terms of Grice's central concerns was at the root of his
long-time interest in providing "philosophical grounds of rationality:
intentions, categories, ends" (P.G.R.I.C.E., for short).

Relation was for Grice, notably, a category -- used by Kant, to supersede
on Aristotle. If Grice stuck with 'relevance' ('be relevant') as a
paraphrase of this rather abstract 'category of thought' (and turn it into a
'conversational category' as he was wont of saying) this should not
preclude us from always keeping in mind the central role of the original
category in our 'system of thought'.

Children are of course different. When Morley-Bunker wanted to test,
empirically, some claims about analytic/synthetic propositions (cited by
Sampson, "Making sense"), "he explicitly excluded philosophers or philosophy
students; they are corrupted already"). Similarly, Chapman recalls how Grice
would _test_ some of his claims not with their children, but with their
playmates ("Can a thing be red and green all over? No spots allowed"). When is
the first level of _propositional_ reasoning shown in children? (Cfr. Why is
it that _quantificational_ (or predicate logic) is deemed prior to
_propositional_ or sentential logic, though?)

MEANING AND BEYOND: Grice and Peacocke on the ‘sense’ of our ‘sense data’

Incidentally, Carston's types of examples, "A red pillar-box" -- cfr. her
"On the top shelf"), versus the fully propositional “That pillar-box seems
_red_ to me” is a rather complex one. (She compares it with G. E. Moore
uttering "My hand!" rather than what he did utter at Harvard, "This is _my_
hand"). For one, and taking into account H. Beck's point about 'making
sense' in his latest (echoing, as it were, Geoffrey Sampson's book by that
title, "Making sense", Oxford: Clarendon), it should *not* be much of a
stretch to introduce a philosophical notion of 'sense' involved here.

Note that the FIRST strand in Grice's retrospective epilogue to WoW is
all about that philosophical term of art, if ever there was one,
"sense-datum". For Russell, sense data were notably _not_ propositional in nature --
"This" was the paradigm of a sense-datum if I recall his stuff – cfr. ‘
logical proper name’). This line of analysis is best explored within the
Oxonian tradition by C. A. B. Peacocke (who, with Schiffer -- "Things we
mean" -- would expand on his views at seminars at Oxford and elsewhere),
and for one, succeeded Sir Peter Strawson as professor of metaphysics at
Oxford (his inaugural lecture was a 'transcendental' justification of
'content'!). This view would emphasise the non-propositional, subpropositional
(or what have you) _content_ of our 'sense' experiences (and note that
Grice was
first and foremost, historically speaking, a 'philosopher of perception'
-- vide his early "Some remarks about the senses", and that's how he was
regarded at Oxford for a time). In a way, it's a bit like a full circle
(Cfr. Paul, Is there a problem about sense data?).

---- As an application. Consider, "on the mat", or "the cat", as
appropriate sub-sentential replies to appropriate questions. What is it involved in
having a 'psychological' attitude (as Grice has it) towards that
propositional complex, '<the cat, the mat>'. How many subdoxastic or
sub-propositional constituents does it involve? How do we expand them, unless in
 terms of any 'behavioural' response on the part of alleged 'holder' of
such a psychological attitude' -- cfr. Grice and Strawson, "In defense of a
dogma").

A. Hall dwells with a further complication: subsentential
(subpropositional) items can _hardly_ be said to play a role in 'reasoning'. How are we
to modify something like Grice's "Principle of Economy of Rational Effort"
to allow that, on occasion, reasoners DO rely on subpropositional items
for calculating what follows from a given set of premisses? (Allott's PhD
work on rationality and pragmatics seems relevant to this).

Grice did not want to regard 'propositions' as primitive items in his
vocabulary, and his constructivist approach to them was in agreement with the
pragmatist tenor of a remark by his once collaborator G. Myro (cited by
Grice in "Reply to Richards"). In a pragmatist vein, 'propositions' rely on
different justifications: not just as 'pegs' on which to hang our logical
(or rational) laws, but, more humanistically, as contents of our, er,
'propositional' attitudes!

(I won't burden the list with further Griceana _on this_, I hope, but
listers know where to go for some quick references, then!)

Cheers.
Speranza
--- The Grice Club, &c.

References

Bar-On, D. Grice and the naturalisation of semantics. Pacific
Philosophical
Quarterly, vol. 76.
Carston, R. 'Linguistic meaning, communicated meaning and cognitive
pragmatics' Mind & Language,17.
Carston, Thoughts and utterances
Chapman, Grice. Palgrave
Grice – and Strawson. Seminar material on “Logical Form”. Oxford.
Grice, ‘Reply to Richards’, in P.G.R.I.C.E. (Oxford, Clarendon)
Grice, WoW
Hall, A. Working Papers in Linguistics
Kant, on "Relation" ("Table of Categories"), Critique of Pure Reason.
Schiffer, On referring. Synthese.
Sperber/Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition
Paul, Is there a problem about sense data? Aristotelian Society
Peacocke, Sense and content. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wharton, Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Received on Thu Feb 17 18:29:45 2011