[lit-ideas] "Sentence" As A Value-Oriented Word

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:49:33 EDT
In a message dated 6/10/2009 9:24:20 A.M.  Eastern Daylight Time, 
karltrogge@xxxxxxxx writes:
In G.E.M Anscombe's  English (remark 108): "We see what we call  
'sentence' and 'language'  has not the formal unity that I imagined,  
but is a family of  structures more or less related to one another.--  


--- Interesting post and thoughts. The thing about the diatom went over my  
head, though. Please feel free to re-explain.
 
Reading the 'sentence' thing up, I thought of ... Grice. In "Life and  
Opinions of Paul Grice", Paul Grice writes of 'sentence' -- and I was surprised 
 
by this -- as a 'value-oriented word', like 'cabbage', he writes, and  
'king'.
 
My friend Tapper was flabbergasted. "What has a cabbage to do with things?" 
 He asked publicly. I told him Grice was relying on Lewis Carroll.

But for the 'sentence' he is relying on a paradigm book for Grice's  
'playgroup': Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" -- the snow ball that started the 
 
avalanche.
 
So, I wouldn't know what Witters is meaning by 'sentence'.

"Ouch" can be a sentence, and so can "Rain!", etc. -- I'm in a  real hurry 
as I write this, so forgive.
 
But _sentence_ is a value-oriented word. There are no good or bad  
sentences. "Sentence" itself _presupposes_ 'good sentence', in the sense of  
well-formed. An ill-formed formula is not a formula. "well-formed" is the most  
otiose thing philosophers will say!
 
I wouldn't put on the same mixed bag 'sentence' and 'language' as Witters  
seems to be doing, and the labyrinth thing, while poetic, is rhetorical for  
philosophical purposes. And rhetoric is well when coming from Grice _only_ 
--  just joking.
 
My love for sentences connects with Zipf. I cannot understand embedded  
sentences alla Zipf. There is a limit for me of 3 embeddings. Geary can do  
four:
 
 The cat killed the rat
The dog that killed the rat died
The mother than nursed the dog that killed the rat died is good
The father of the mother of the dog that killed the rat died is good is not 
 good.
 
Etc.
 
See Zipfs for details -- or write to Geary: he is _busy_.
 
I love Henninge too, and he once wrote wonderfully about Brie cheese and  
Implicatura. I treasure and cherrish that. He knows a lot, and so does a man 
who  does not want to be named, whose heart breaks at the sound of good 
German  music.
 
Cheers,
 
JL Speranza
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
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[lit-ideas] "Sentence" As A Value-Oriented Word

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