[lit-ideas] Re: Or not
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 02:44:35 EDT
My last post today.
In a message dated 6/22/2011 2:59:18 A.M., rpaul@xxxxxxxx quotes my
>>I agree with McEvoy that context is sometimes important -- but surely
what Grice means by a 'generalised conversational implicature' cannot depend
_that_ much on context.
and adds, interestingly:
>Context is all and the agents' beliefs are part of it. I'm not sure what
a 'generalized conversational implicature' is.
SCENARIO I: A former governor of New York, to a call-girl who sits down on
the hotel bed and starts reading [aloud, the middle chapter of a book by]
Dostoevsky:
"Are you the woman I've been waiting for—or not?"
(Perhaps in another movie he says '…sort of woman...'). The implicature
seems to be that she *isn't* behaving like the sort of woman he bargained
for, and he'd like her to begin to.
------ The problem here may be deepened by the nonbound use of "the woman".
Answers: "I AM the woman". If the reference is 'rigid' -- it's a matter of
'the woman' -- being attributively referred to by, 'the woman I've been
waiting for' -- to fit the _referential_ designation. Or something.
-----
>Mother to son who has asked her to help him with his math, but is talking
on his cell phone:
"Do you want me to help you with your math—or not?"
>The implicature seems to be that *if* he wants her to help him, he'd
better put down his cell phone, for he isn't behaving *as if* he wanted her
help just then (and she's got better things to do, etc.). It may be that the
parenthetical material is a different implicature.
True. In this case, there seems to be an 'echo' behind it. As with "Are you
leaving -- or not?" I would suggest that the son should have expressed, at
an earlier stage of their cooperative conversations (for Grice all
conversation is cooperative) that the mother was wanted. It would be rude (on
the
mother's part), out of the blue, to come out with "Do you want me to help
you with your math?" (minus the 'or not' or not) unless this is what the son
wanted, initially. Perhaps here the expanded answer by the son could be:
"Surely you can help me with the math while I finish this conversation?".
Third scenario:
"Are you leaving—or not?"
>implicates that the questioner thinks the person she's talking to has
said *earlier* that he was leaving, but seems to be taking his own sweet time
about it.
Indeed. The 'ditto' idea is a good one. Grice used it to refer to 'true'
("It is true that it is raining" -- the 'ditto' theory of truth: Someone said
that it was raining).
R. Paul: "This morning, someone said that adding 'or not' to a question
that would seem the same question without it, was otiose, or something and
only people who liked to hear themselves talk would do it.Thus,
"Can he spell 'Nietzsche,' or not?"
does no more work than
"Can he spell 'Nietzsche'?"
does by itself.
This may be true, but the question in question is a simple query. whereas
the utterances in 1, 2, and 3, are not mere queries; they are utterances
meant to convey to the person to whom they're addressed that the speaker wants
to give that person to understand that the utterer finds that person's
behaviour is incompatible with the utterer's expectations.
What these expectations are depend upon what we all happily call 'the
context' —the back story. They cannot be read off the words themselves.
>Caveat for "ditto": R. Paul: "*This need not be a part of it. The host
may have other reasons for thinking that he would have left long since.").
------------ end cited material, with slight interspered material, then.
Excellent. Meanwhile, I've been doing some research, but got somehow stuck
with 'whether or not'.
Plus, I'm thinking, with Grice, in replacing every occurrence of 'whether'
by 'if' (a more prestigious operator, in logic). I have to deal with the
grammaticality of:
"We'll have a party whether it rains." ----- ('or not' redunant).
"She is Japanese whether you don't like it" (cfr. "She is Japanese whether
you like it" ('or not' redundant).
I'll analyse the 3 scenarios above re: Grice and provide a commentary, if I
can (<---- That is usually redundant).
Etc. And the back story is also McEvoy's original (VERY original):
"Should I see Dylan tomorrow -- or not?"
By reliance on context, it may seem that he is minimising the 'should I see
Dylan' as a necessity. He is bringing the 'or not', as something that he
may end up deciding. Note that true necessities have no 'alternate', as it
were (cfr. the oddity of -- "Should 2 + 2 = 4, or not?")
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
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