Let us compare:"This post by JL turns out to be not overly tedious." There
does seem to be a lingering implicature here, but it is not the one that JL
seems to be drawing. The implicature pertains to OTHER posts by JL, not to
the one at hand.
O.K.
On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 5:55 PM, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Speranza forgot, as it happens, the funnel.
The logical form cannot be what is written below (to see this, suffices to
observe than not having the identity condition of x and y being the same
set, we can have an arrest (which is the existent x) and an unexpected deat
h of castro (which is the y)
And so on,,,,,,,,,……….,,,,…..
*From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@
freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Sent:* Sunday, November 27, 2016 6:50 PM
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Rival Revivals: Implicatures and Beyond
Geary wrote:
i. There's the arrest of Gordon Golightly for the murder of Maxine and
other unexpected developments.
McEvoy commented:
"I found Gordon's arrest all too predictable. The cops were heavy-handed
from when they first came in, if I recall correctly, on page 34. But now I
see you've out-Griced me - by referring to "other unexpected developments"
you could be implicaturing "other developments that were also unexpected"
or "other developments which were, by contrast, unexpected". Which it is, I
know not. Therefore I cannot be sure that my finding Gordon's arrest all
too predictable is any kind of dissent from your claim that there are
"other unexpected developments". I wish I'd never discovered Grice and
implicature. I wish my life were simpler. I wish the Touro external
harddrive 4tb were still available at a reasonable price. I'm concerned for
Gordon too."
We may have at play what Grice would call a 'scope implicature'. In this
case, the scope of 'unexpected' of course. In terms of logical form (or
'algebra,' as Geary prefers) we might have:
ii. ExEy. Ax & Uy
where "A" stands for 'arrest' and "U" for 'unexpected'. There is an x,
such as that this x is an arrest, and there is an y, such as this y is an
unexpected development.
McEvoy might wonder why we don't formalize the 'other'. In "The Genealogy
of Disjunction," Jennings claims, rightly, that 'other', originally, meant
'second'. But bringing Jennings in here might be an instance of obscurus
per obscurius.
Then consider
iii. My brother likes paintings by Botticelli and other Italian masters.
Or
iv. My brother prefers Chianti or any other Italian wine to any French one!
In (iii) it seems to be a case of 'entailment,' rather than 'implicature',
that the utterer believes Botticelli is an Italian master. In (iv), it
seems again to be an entailment that the utterer believes (and rightly)
that Chianti is an Italian wine.
The case of implicature works on the assumption that Geary is FLOUTING
Grice's maxims. For example, he could have obviated the 'other':
v. Gordon gets arrested for the murder of Maxine. Add to this developments
which turn to be, unlike perhaps the aforementioned one, pretty unexpected.
That sounds clumsy and a flouting of Grice's maxim, "be brief". So if each
word in Geary's prose has its weight, we have to allow that the logical
form of the utterance (i) IMPLICATES that Geary believes that Gordon's
arrest was unexpected. The gloss on the addressee's part would run along
the lines: "Should Geary cared to let us know that he did NOT think
Gordon's arrest (for the murder of Maxine) was unexpected, he should have
abbiden by Grice's maxim, "Be as informative as is required" and EXPLICATE
it. Since he didn't, he is allowing maximal scope for 'U' in (ii), which
becomes:
vi. ExEy. UAx & UDy
where I add "D" to stand for 'development' for symmetry purposes. And so
on.
Cheers,
Speranza
