🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Nov12.191633.76256@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
peterson@CS.ColoState.EDU (james peterson) writes:

>In article <1992Nov11.232151.17295@midway.uchicago.edu>
>gal2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>>This is speculation, but I think that pragmatic theory is so fuzzy and
>>hand-wavy in comparison simply because (so far (as I know)) we have
>>not even managed to analyze situations / contexts into neat isolated
>>atomic concepts that we can name with symbols. I believe the same is
>>true to a lesser extent for semantic theory.

JP:
>It seems to me a suspicious, if not fallacious, assumption that context
>can be reduced to context-free elements.  I don't see this kind of "analysis"
>going anywhere.

Three cheers for the Firthian remark!  Having expressed my wholehearted
appreciation of James' point, I shall assume my habitual part of the
_advocatus diaboli_.  The situation indicates a systematic ambiguity
implicit in our notion of context.  On one hand, there is the semantic
conception of context as the concept space mutually accessible to the
parties in communication; on the other hand, there is the underlying
reality contingently represented by the same concepts.  The question
seems to depend on the nature of the relation obtaining between the two.

Intuitively, it seems to me that communication ought to be logically
possible quite regardless of the mundane substratum which realizes the
abstract primitives of our language.  (Others, e.g. Quinean behaviorists,
would surely disagree...)  An important exception to this intuition may
be exemplified by the role of exophoric, or ostensive factors in
linguistic communication.  There is an amusing paper by John Lyons,
"Deixis as the source of reference", published in the Keenan-edited
volume, _Formal Semantics of Natural Language_, and essentially
recapitulated in the second volume of his _Semantics_.  On the more
philosophical side of things, I recommend the work of David Kaplan and
Gareth Evans.  Read it, and draw your own conclusions.

>Just a thought......
>
>-- 
>james lee peterson				peterson@CS.ColoState.edu
>dept. of computer science                       
>colorado state university		"Some ignorance is invincible."
>ft. collins, colorado  (voice:303/491-7137; fax:303/491-6639)

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
" -- I shall speak bluntly, because life is short."