🚀 go-pugleaf

In article  <1993Jan3.194211.18969@husc3.harvard.edu> Michael Zeleny writes:
]In article <C0Apzo.IDG@ccu.umanitoba.ca> 
]feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:
]
]The language cake can be sliced in many ways, to effect a working
]distinction between semantics and pragmatics.  I prefer to do it along
]Fregean lines, -- the simple idea of force, combined with the relegation
]of propositions to the Platonic Third Realm, seems infinitely preferable
]to the Husserlian mentalist garbage of Austin & Searle.  So pragmatics
]becomes, _pace_ Bar-Hillel and Montague, a matter of attending to
]deixis.

I don't understand that paragraph, but it looks like you are
advocating the old idea that communication consists of sentences
combined with a pragmatic "force".  This position is just not tenable
if you want to describe all communication and not just grammatically
"correct" sentences.

It has been shown that communication is not clearly demarcable from
other sorts of behavior except by intention.  People can and do
communicate in original ways, so that the ones that they are
communicating with must infer their meaning without resort to a
mutually understood semantics.  Also, people engage in speech or other
apparently communicative behaviors (rolling the eyes, shrugging, etc.)
with no intention to communicate.  There is also the fact that people
engage in behaviors that are describable by a grammar where there is
no semantics to the grammer.

The only way to distinguish communication from other behaviors is by
the intention of the one engaging in the behavior.  If someone does
anything --speak, roll his eyes, send radio signals, play a guitar,
look at the sky-- with a communicative intention, then his behavior is
communicative.  Furthermore, it seems a bit outrageous to try to apply
a grammar and semantics to all sorts of human behaviors --particluarly
when the semantics (and not the pragmatics alone) is dependent on the
mutual history of those communicating.

I think it is most reasonable to describe communication in a manner
similar to this: a communicator engages in some behavior with the
intention to elicit a response from an audience in such a way that the
response of the audience is due to the audience's recognition of the
the communicator's intent.  Speech (whether verbal, written, gestural,
morse code, etc.) is merely a set of conventions for communication.
When you have a set of behaviors, you can describe the set with a
grammar, and when you have a set of communicative behaviors, you can
usually apply a semantics to the behaviors.  So while speech may have
syntax and semantics (this itself is not unarguable) it is not the
case for all communication.

For example: Otis comes into the Mayberry sheriff's office, obviously
drunk, staggers into a jail cell and closes it.  Barny looks at Andy
and ostensibly rolls his eyes.  Barny is communicating something to
Andy, but what is the semantics of his communication?  Is he saying

  "Otis is drunk again."
  "Otis found another illegal source of liquor."
  "I'm tired of Otis coming in here."
  "I'm disgusted with Otis's behavior."
  "I think we ought to get more serious about enforcement around here."
  "How come we never get any real criminals so I can use my bullet?"

There is no sentence in the above that has exactly the meaning that
Barny is communicating, yet they all strike chords of similarity
though some of them are quite different.  Yet Andy grimaces, nods, and
goes back to work at his desk, Barny --satisfied that his
communicative intention has been fulfilled-- goes back to his
telephone conversation with Thelma-Lue, Otis snores loudly, and the
audience feels that they know what has just occurred.
-- 
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu