[lit-ideas] Peccavi, Vovi
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:41:10 -0500
>>Consider "Peccavi"? I have Scinde.? That was
a 'code' (discussed by Grice, as 'implicature' -- Way of
Words).<<
?
"Scinde"??
Since I know he'll like a rhyme:
"Peccavi" (= 'I've Scinde'),
?? wrote Lord Ellen -- so proud!
More briefly, Dalhousie
?? wrote, "Vovi" (= 'I've Oude').
discussed by Grice, WOW, ii. The implicatures are not impossible but pretty
convoluted and Grice does suggest:
"This is a complex example. Gen. Ellen had captured the province of Scinde, and
sent back the famous message.
The ambiguity involved in the message, "I have Scinde"/"I have sinned", is
_phonemic_, not morphemic.
The expression actually used, "Peccavi" is _unambiguous_ -- so hardly a flout
to the maxim, "Avoid ambiguity".
But, since it is in a language foreign to speaker and hearer (Latin);
translation is called for. And the ambiguity resides in the standard
translation into native English.
The non-straightforward interpretant _is_ conveyed.
There is the question as to whether the *straightforward* interpretant, "I have
sinned" is being conveyed -- 'said' rather than 'implicated'.
"There are stylistic reasons for conveying by a sentence merely its
nonstraightforward interpretant, but it would be pointless, and perhaps also
stylistically objectionable, to go to the trouble of finding an expression that
nonstraightforwardly conveys "I have sinned", thus imposing on the addressee
the effort involved in finding this interpretant, if this interpretant were
otiose as far as communication is concerned."
"Whether the straightforward interpretant is also being conveyed seems to
depend on whether such a [Gearyan] supposition would conflict with other
conversational requirements, for example, would it be RELEVANT (Relation),
would it be something the speaker could be supposed to accept, and so on.
If such requirements are NOT satisfied, then the straightforward interpretatnt
is not being conveyed.
If they are, it is.
If the author of "Peccavi" could NATURALLY be supposed, for example, to think
that he had COMMITTED some kind of transgression, for example, had DISOBEYED
his orders in capturing Scinde, and if reference to such a transgression would
be RELEVANT to the presumed interests of the addressee, then he _would_ be
conveying _both_ interpretants. Otherwise, he would be conveying only the
nonstraightforwad one."
JLS
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