[lit-ideas] Re: Brit tourist suspected to have been murdered after being ...
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 12:16:12 EDT
Donal McEvoy argues:
"A person can be suspected of being murdered
although they have not been found dead [Jimmy Hoffa]. So
this is not redundant 'by implicature'".
---- i.e.
"Brit tourist suspected to have been murdered after being found dead."
------
Thank you! Plus, of course, as Ritchie knows, there should be no assumption
that all dead have been _murdered_.
----
"It might follow a previous headline, 'Brit Tourist missing', and confirms
they have been found, albeit not in the rudest of health.
Donal
Supporting his local sheriff
Grammar Community Support Officer
Ldn."
-----
True. The problem with supporting grammar here is that what the police said
is possibly in Chinese. This is the Independent report:
"A British tourist who has been
missing for five days in Hong Kong is suspected
to have been murdered after being found dead."
>[T]his is not redundant by 'implicature'.
True, but perhaps a better, if more boring, wording would have been:
"The CORPSE of a British tourist is suspected to
belong to a person who was murdered"?
----
In this connection, allow me to quote from Geary, "functioning in a
Southern kind of way":
>I'm just glad that he wasn't suspected of
being murdered after being found alive. I hate it when that happens.
If we replace Geary's 'alive' by NOT-DEAD, we indeed yield the
implicature-by-contradiction.
While McEvoy can claim that not all people found dead have been murdered
(and thus finds the report of the news impeccable) one wonders if we don't
have a clash with another of Grice's maxims:
'be brief'
--- along with 'be orderly'.
1. A British tourist who has been missing for five days in Hong Kong is
suspected to have been murdered after being found dead.
The unfortunate 'inversion of events' seems to be due (via implicature) to
a dangling 'after'. The report is best read to have 'after' a maximal
scope. As such, it can be imported to an earlier placement in the whole clause:
2. A British tourist -- WHOSE CORPSE WAS FOUND -- is suspected to have been
murdered.
----
In this way we avoid the unhappy 'unwanted' (perhaps) implicature that the
British tourist was MURDERED after being found dead.
Cheers
Speranza
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